Still LIVESTRONG

Photo courtesy of simplyRobin

Say some one tells you that you could save the lives of thousands, tens of thousands of people. That you could inspire hundreds of thousands of people to overcome their struggle or their close ones' struggle with cancer. That you could inspire millions of people to start running, cycling, "just do" something with their lives.
But all that will have to come at a price, at your own expense. You would have to become a sports hero, using illegal methods.
Would you still do those beautiful inspiring things by cheating?.............................................................................................................................................

Would you kill Hitler when he was still an innocent person at 19 years old? Would you stop the use of placebo medicine, just because in itself it is a deceitful medicine?

I am not saying that the answer to those questions is yes or no. It's just something to think about.

At the same time I'm not suggesting that that's what Lance Armstrong was thinking before conquering the cycling world. Actually almost definitely this was not his first thought, however... in the end, the good has been done.

My biggest disappointment with Lance Armstrong is that, even though I always knew in the back of my mind that he wasn't clean, he did not just deny the doping accusations. He was adamant against them and he went to incredible lengths to support his status. But that's probably also partly attributed to his arrogant, cocky persona.

Also the fact that he did not feel he wasn't doing anything wrong at the time, might sound ridiculous to some, but it certainly doesn't to anyone who knows a thing or two about cycling. Doping was and still might be as "water in their bottles" and "air in their tires" to the cyclists and most probably no cyclist in the Tour, at least in those times, could not consider himself as entirely innocent. So if you call Armstrong a big lie, might as well call the whole sport of professional cycling a big lie. However I can't and I still think it's a beautiful sport and I love it.

When I was younger, I read his book "It's not about the bike" (a title which coming from his mouth sounds ironic these days). It was my first online purchase ever, it was the first and only book that inspired me at that level to be a good and a fair person and to try to achieve something great.
I am one of those persons that do not possess that natural great drive to continuously work towards achievement of goals, I'm known to slack from time to time and I need these type of incentives to keep me going. His book and himself were and still are one of those incentives.

Whenever I go cycling indoor or outdoor I still wear his US Postal t-shirt in which he won his first Tour de France, a t-shirt that I've bought during a trip to London with the colossal sum for me back then of 75pounds, approximately a third of my allowance for that trip. Whenever I get out of a saddle to climb a small hill, I sometimes look back, as if I'm Lance looking back at Jan Ullrich on the Alpe d'Huez before attacking and when i look down to my shirt, I can still see his necklace going left and right in the rhythm of his upbeat pedaling.
Those are images that stayed with me and still motivate me after all these years and no one can take them away from me, no doping scandal, no confession and certainly no number of people who think the world is strictly split into good and bad, throwing rocks at him.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the emotions, the hype, the pounding of the heart when he won a climb  or when for the first time he couldn't keep up on a climb, the feeling that you can reach the moon... those were real... they still ARE.

So for all these, I felt that I needed to write this and say "Thank you, Lance!"