miloman said:
It isn’t a question of what’s “right or wrong,” it’s a question of who is the right person, or in this case, the right entity and proper forum, to right whatever wrong was committed. I stand by my statement that sports are simply entertainment! Why does Versus and Universal Sports pay for the rights to televise the Tour de France and Vuelta respectively? It’s for entertainment purposes and to generate advertising revenue. They know that there is a segment of the population who will sit in front of their TV for 2 hours, watching the spectacle, and advertisers will pay a predetermined amount of money to hoc their products to the audience. Does everyone who watches the Superbowl play American Football? Of course not! Does everyone who watches cycling on televison ride 3 times a week and compete at some level? No! Like most all sports, it’s appreciated on many different levels and there are fans for a myriad of reasons.
I don’t condone what was done, in fact I detest it! I am one of the suckers who have always played by the rules and came up short while others chose to cut corners and succeeded. I could argue that their success should have been mine. But at the end of the day, I still needed to look at myself in the mirror and like who I saw. I have kids. Results or not, I would never want to be in the position of having to lie to them to protect an image. On more than one occasion I have imagined what it would be like to have your child come to you and ask you point blank if you cheated or doped. I don’t think the pat answer that “I was the most tested athlete in the world and I never failed a drug test” would suffice. However, in a court of law, that is the evidence that carries the most weight.
Why did Marion Jones go to jail? Not because she took performance enhancing drugs, but because she lied to a grand jury. She went to jail for perjury. Roger Clemmons may suffer the same fate. Arrogance was their downfall, and maybe it will be Lance’s. But to expect the US Government to right this wrong, and put thing straight, is misguided.
Sports have their governing bodies. The UCI, WADA etc. were responsible for setting up the rules and enforcing them. Whether they were/are incompetent or complicitous, that’s a matter that needs to be taken up by cycling’s rank and file. But don’t expect someone else to do their dirty work. If you are so doggedly determined to see a grand jury convened and have this case heard, why not set up a fund to help cover the costs. Like the deplorable “Floyd Fairness Fund,” we can establish the “Lynch Lance Fund” and send the money to our legislators. Then we can sit around our TV’s and watch CSPAN, knowing that we, the cycling community, have spoken with our wallets. And for those of us who would rather be out riding or spending times with our kids, there’s always TiVo.
Let me propose a radical idea. Why not commit to volunteering in your community or schools? So many government programs have been cut recently and our schools are severely underfunded. Make a difference! What will the price tag be for this inquiry? Estimates from the recent balco laboratory case put the figure upwards of $50 million dollars. $50 million! $50 million will pave a lot of bike paths; fund a lot of afterschool programs. Given the economy, is this best use of taxpayer’s money? I’d rather see the bike paths!
I share much of your perspective, on many of the same levels. In the bigger scope of world problems, I have seen what harm can come when truly evil people do wrong. The "Lance" scandal is insignificant in the world of wrongdoing, save that the stage it has been played out makes it, in itself, entertainment.
As for clean sport as entertainment, I'd argue that clean or dirty, the sport of cycling must first be governed by fairplay for it to be a sport and sports as entertainment is simply personal choice. What makes it special is the connection that a person has with it based on everyone having a bike and riding roads the racers travel.
In the context of society, it is very important to have boundaries whereby fraud and theft must be limited. Scandals like Bernie Maddoff and Michael Milken are strong in our view when ones own greed and arrogance overcomes the standards of society and law. Skirting laws and rules come with consequences. Frauding a Govt out of many tens of millions will always draw a reaction, and rightly so. Citing a bigger problem, in an effort to discount the need to attend to a clearly smaller one does not minimize the wrongdoing, only the scale of the wrong itself.
I find myself drawn to this scandal because of the US legal complications attached. It is fascinating. If Lance and his peers are proven to have committed this fraud, it cannot go unpunished. It is the function of justice to determine who, what, where, when, why and how. They won't ignore this because of "who", and their altruistic actions benefiting cancer victim hope. This is not Robin Hood.
I think the idea of volunteer-ism is one that separates us from the animals. Doing good for society, with no expectation for something in return, is what makes us human. One can do so in many ways, and if sports is your calling, there is no limit of ways to offer help to teams and organizations where one can educate youth about ideals of sport - fairplay and sportsmanship, team work, hard work, achievement, failure, etc.
Applying your logic to this scandal, though, ignores many tenets of what society views as sacred, specifically about justice and laws. Break the law, suffer the consequences. Justice must be blind, and this is what keeps folks on the law-abiding side. Founding a charity does not provide immunity.
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