Your information regarding Lance Armstrong’s “positive” test in 1999 is inaccurate. He used Cemalyt corticosteroid cream to treat saddle sores for a few days. He definitely had approval of Gerard Portes prior to using it, as did several other riders that also tested positive for it at the time but they didn’t interest the Euro press. The exact chemical composition of this drug was easily distinguished from any other corticosteroids with modern drug testing and it isn’t available in an injectable form as far as I know. Also the trace amounts picked up in his urine were so minute that the sensitivity of those drug tests quite impressed me as well as many of my fellow physicians. It also amazes me that anyone would think there are significant performance enhancing benefits from that drug.
If a local guy you knew caught a train in the middle of the Boston Marathon how would you feel about him?
This issue raises all kinds of emotions that can be hard to sort out. On the one hand, most people want to forgive and forget. On the other hand, it is human nature to distrust such an individual and many people will have little or nothing to do with him afterwards.
I don’t think this is a case of cheating versus murder but of trust and feeling, well, cheated as a spectator and supporter of the sport. It is also a question of where to put such issues in the pantheon of values and responses.
The bottom line is that almost everyone has cheated in one way or another in their life. We’ve all taken a shortcut- speeding excessively is a good example (stealing time and distance)-and NOT paid a price for it. We should take all of this cum granulo salis, and can the hypocrisy. I am no better than Richard Virenque because I haven’t used EPO, steroids, or whatever.
Hypocrisy is worse than the cheating…
Personally, I think the mistakes people make enrich our lives as much as the perfection people occasionally achieve. It is the Yin and Yang of our multi-faceted existence. I am as intrigued by Richard Speck as I am by Lance Armstrong.
