Lance Armstrong retires ... again -The iPINIONS Journal

Superstar athletes invariably vow (early in their careers) to retire at the top of their game. But few of them ever do. In fact only two come to mind: one is heavyweight boxer Rocky Marciano who retired with a perfect 49-0 record, which included an instructive victory over his childhood hero Joe Louis – who was way past his prime but suffering too much foolish pride to quit; the other is football player John Elway who retired after leading the Denver Broncos to consecutive Super Bowl championships in 1998 and 1999.

By contrast, the list of those who retired under a cloud of long-faded glory is, well, as legendary as it is long. It includes Willie Mays in baseball, Bobby Orr in hockey, Michael Jordan in basketball, Brett Favre in football, Merlene Ottey in track and field, and Mark Spitz in swimming. Now, alas, we can add Lance Armstrong in cycling.

Armstrong’s bona fides as a superstar athlete are well known – highlighted by his unprecedented seven consecutive victories in the Tour de France. As it happened, when he announced his retirement after that seventh victory in 2005 he seemed destined for the hall of fame of superstar athletes who retired on top.

Unfortunately, like far too many of his peers, Armstrong found the nostalgic pull of old glory too much to resist. Therefore, he came out of retirement in 2008 in a foolish pursuit to recapture it.

He failed spectacularly. Actually, he could not win a race to save his life, finishing 23^rd in last year’s Tour de France and 65^th in the final race last month that forced him to announce his second (and final) retirement last week.

Even worse, his comeback was dogged by increasingly credible reports about his use of performance enhancing drugs – reports which are now threatening to undermine, if not render null and void, all of his legendary accomplishments.

Officials probing possible fraud and doping charges against U.S. cycling champion Lance Armstrong and his associates are issuing grand jury subpoenas to witnesses…

The investigation was sparked by former Tour de France winner Floyd Landis, who alleged that he and other riders on the U.S. Postal Service team engaged in doping in the early to mid-2000s. Landis claimed the team used its funds to buy doping products and said seven-time Tour winner Armstrong had encouraged doping.

(FOX News, July 13, 2010)

Reports are that several other teammates have already ratted on him to federal authorities. And I remember well watching three-time Tour winner Greg LeMond say (on the July 20, 2010 edition of the CBS Evening News) that the evidence of Armstrong’s drug use is “overwhelming.” At the time I thought it was Tour envy, but the defiantly drug-free LeMond may yet be vindicated.

But I was not without my own suspicions. For here is how I presaged his fate in this respect almost six years ago:

Is Lance Armstrong a legitimate sports hero or a cycling dope fiend who used his cocktail of cancer drugs to mask the illegal drugs he took to juice his body through seven-consecutive victories in the Tour de France? Lance, buddy, say it ain’t so…

If Armstrong turns out to be another Rafael Palmeiro, then I’m sure his cycle of bad karma will soon render the one testicle he has left utterly useless. [Palmeiro is the baseball superstar who, like Armstrong, continually denied taking performance-enhancing drugs with self-righteous indignation only to finally confess after being confronted with undeniable evidence.]

(French trying to ensnare Armstrong in drugs scandal, The iPINIONS Journal, August 25, 2005)

The jury is still out in Armstrong’s case. But I am convinced beyond any reasonable doubt that he would be basking in nostalgic glow instead of sweating a looming federal indictment if he had sufficient humility and good sense to let that seventh-consecutive Tour victory be his swan song.

I am also convinced that an indictment would precipitate a fall from grace that surpasses Bernie Madoff’s; not least because Armstrong traded on his reputation as testicular-cancer survivor to raise over $400 million for his Livestrong Foundation.

Indeed, I suspect people would not even wait for a jury verdict to begin ripping off their yellow bracelets in disillusionment and utter disgust. This, of course, would put his plan to dedicate the rest of his life to raising more funds for cancer research on terminal support.