There are reasons to dislike Lance Armstrong. For instance, he’s a bully and a liar. That’s enough. But while he broke the rules of his sport with PEDs, labeling him a cheat is problematic. It’s even hypocritical. From students to classical musicians to truck drivers, people are using drugs to aid them in their endeavors. But for some reason, athletes are held to a higher standard. In fact, in sometimes they’re denied legitimate medical treatments because the rules of their games are so arbitrary. We’ll all be relying on enhanced performance more and more in the future, so perhaps we should have an honest discussion about what “cheating” means. I think we avoid that conversation in the name of maintaining some sense of “purity” that never existed. Athletes have always cheated and so have the rest of us. For some reason, some of it is considered permissible and some isn’t. We need to sort that out.
From an excellent interview that Grantland’s Bill Simmons conducted with Alex Gibney, The Armstrong Lie director:
“Bill Simmons:
What about the part when people talk about what is cheating and what isn’t cheating and what is performance enhancement and what isn’t? So, I’m a pitcher, I blow out my arm, they pull a ligament out of some dead guy, they sew it into my arm and I can pitch again. That’s legal. I can’t write anything in the morning unless I have 20 ounces of coffee. Caffeine. That’s legal. That’s fine. We like coffee, all of us like coffee. Let’s say Lance takes HGH which is given from patients aged 60 and older to help them recover faster from surgeries or just feel better, whatever.
Alex Gibney:
Well, they use to give EPO to cancer patients to regenerate blood cells.
Bill Simmons:
Right, these are things given to people to make them feel better, but with athletes we draw the line. No, they can’t do that. That’s bad, they can’t do that. If Lance blew out his knee, he could put a dead guy’s ligament in his knee and that’s fine. Think about it. We’ve never really made sense of what makes sense and we doesn’t make sense.
Alex Gibney:
That’s what led somebody like [Armstrong’s coach Michele] Ferrari to be totally cynical. They keep making up these rules. You can sleep in an altitude tent, but you can’t take EPO. What’s sense does that make? But on the other hand, I think we can say that cheating is breaking the rules.”
