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24 • Touchline • Issue 14
ance Armstrong will never end up on the lowest
rung of the social ladder despite his financial
apocalypse, but his reputation certainly can plunge no
lower.
Sponsors fleeing, jerseys and titles striped, seemingly the world
has united in a mutual hatred of the former golden boy of
cycling. The question of “what next?” must be the first thought
he has when he wakes up and the last before he goes to sleep.
His claim in late October that it had been a “tough week” must
be one of the great understatements of sport.
So, what next for Lance Armstrong and cycling as a sport?
Everyone hates a cheat, but a cheating hypocrite? Popular
sentiment is reflected by the fact that Edenbridge Bonfire
Society recently burned an effigy of him, a sure sign of his deep
unpopularity. His giant reputation, that of an against-all-odds,
fate-defying saint, was so dramatically inspirational. The truth,
as it turns out, is just as dramatic, albeit in an incredibly negative
way. The lying, the cheating, the bullying. . .it all seems so much
worse given the way he created and sustained the myths that
came to surround him.
Needless to say, his legacy on a personal level is to reduce him
to a figure of mockery. His near future will be filled with court
battles and depositions. Lance Armstrong; sportsman, is just
as dead as Lance Armstrong; hero. His future battles will be in
court, not on the roads and alpine passes of the cycling trails.
On an individual level, marketing expert Cary Kaplan has been
quoted as saying he can opt to deal with this crisis in three
ways. He can keep denying what happened, but given the
comprehensive nature of the 1000 page report conducted into
his cheating, this option is unrealistic. His second choice is just
to go underground, avoiding the press and basically leaving
us with a silent, Armstrong sized hole. People will soon lose
interest. The third option is to come clean. By getting it all off
his chest, possibly with heartfelt tears and a searing honesty, he
might just claw some of the public’s respect.
Doubtful. The legacy of his drug use in a wider context makes
him the whipping boy for the entire cycling establishment. Like
some Roman emperor expunging the name of his predecessor,
cycling associations have spend the past week chiselling his
name off trophies.
“Lance Armstrong has no place in cycling,” says Pat McQuaid,
president of the International Cycling Union. “He deserves to be
forgotten in cycling.”
HOW THE
MIGHTY FALL
L
WHERE NEXT FOR LANCE ARMSTRONG?
TIMOTHY MOTTRAM INVESTIGATES
HIS LEGACy