No More Heroes

Since the USADA report on Lance Armstrong it has been impossible to open a paper, listen to the radio, or go online without reading something about him and the cycling culture when he was the capo dei capi. It is as if a dam has been burst and all the cycling journalists have at last been been given opportunity to vent what they secretly knew and other journalists, with little specialist knowledge, have leapt aboard feeling they must say something. There is now no need to say any more - and I don’t want to. Except ... except the story is so fascinating there are always little strands hanging out, tempting you to pull and I want to tug at the idea of the hero.

There was a good interview on PM with Paul Willerton, a former team mate of Armstrong, who had been publicly protesting that Nike should withdraw their sponsorship. At one stage, after some sympathetic questioning, he got slightly emotional as he thought about the bullying Greg Lemond received and in that one small moment gave a little insight into how tough it must have been to live through the era and question the prevailing culture. The ability of someone (it could be anyone but in this case it was Lance Armstrong) to have enough power to be able to mobilise overwhelming force and relentlessly pursue anyone who got in their way, is one of the aspects of the affair that deserves further exploration. Perhaps a full analysis will be done but a part of the answer is related to something else Willerton said:

Nike wanted to create a Prefontaine figure; a legend out of someone who was merely a man. Nike didn’t care about cycling what they really cared about was taking someone like Lance Armstrong and moulding him into a marketing machine.

This is spot on. The whole story of the recovery from cancer and  the determination and raw sporting ability required to come back and conquer his sport is definitely the stuff of legend. Inspite of anything else it is a story of resolve and mental and physical strength. Obviously it has now been invalidated by the industrial scale of the drug taking (i.e. cheating) and his behaviour to others but while that was under wraps his profile was, in a sporting sense, heroic. This was exploited by Nike and Trek to shift huge amounts of product and build the brand in the public imagination. As they wanted to be associated with greatness so that a little bit of it could rub off on anybody who bought their goods, it was in their interests to build-up the extraordinariness of their champion. In doing so the attention and money they gave to Armstrong enhanced his stature, built and then reinforced his power. How could the UCI remain uninfluenced by a man who had presidents in his phone address book and was iconic in the American market? How could foot soldiers in the peloton, or others associated with the sport, stand-up to his might?

It is an illustration of the trend in modern capitalism - the concentration of power and wealth into fewer and fewer hands, whilst the rest of us are given the opportunity to bathe in pool of their reflected glory. In this case though it was also allied to the way our appreciation of sport has evolved from recreation, to support for the local team, to an industry built on celebrating champions we are encouraged to identify with. In such a system the ones at the top really do have all the power and the status of Lance Armstrong meant  he could control his world.

The question is though not whether he was or was not a hero but why we need such figures at all. For sure we all need exemplars and people who can embody our human potential but what forces so many of us to invest so much of ourselves in the impossible virtue of our champions? What is our hunger for myths?

Perhaps I should repeat these famous lines of Brecht:

 Andrea: Unhappy the land that has no heroes
Galileo: No, unhappy the land in need of heroes

Honesty in Sport, Drug Taking in Sport

When I recently wrote recently that running was essentially honest, i.e. the figures did not lie and your times tell you precisely how good a runner you are, I was not talking about high level competition where money and prestige hang on racing results. Sport really is two different things: there is the recreational activity, where you challenge yourself and hope to find out more about your own nature. In the fullest sense it is amateur (no matter how methodically the task is approached) - it is done purely out of love and a sense of personal satisfaction. Then there is elite sport, which is a profession. People obviously come into it from love but once they reach a certain level it becomes a job and the results matter to other people as well as themselves. They become part of a system which exerts its own demands

In professional sport there is an ethos of doing all you can to develop an edge over other competitors and if there are not strict rules and adherence to those rules the line between right and wrong, honesty and lying can become blurred. If the main criteria is any advantage you can gain and you think other people are getting away with things that are not right what is there to stop someone going over to the dark side?

These questions are now as pertinent as ever. A couple of weeks ago came the news that Kenyan athletes were being investigated for doping. No! I reacted. I just did not want this to be the so. I had bought into the idea that Kenyan dominance of middle and long distance running was a mixture of genetics, a life time of running to get around, plus diet and good coaching. I really wanted to believe that it was all a combination of talent plus people like Brother O’Connell, who coaches David Rudisha. Nothing else. I wanted and still want the good story - but who knows if that is now the case.

What is no longer in doubt though is the sorry state of cycling during the reign of Lance Armstrong.  The USADA has finally published its case and fully exposed the culture of systematic doping and deceit.The reasoned decision and supplementary material are available here and the case is overwhelming. I have already spent too much time reading it with a sense of fascinated horror. Even though I already knew the broad outlines of what had happened, even though I have assumed for years that Armstrong must have doped to win seven Tour de France titles (think about it - if he was beating people who we know were taking drugs, either he was a different species of being or he was taking the same, or better stuff. None of his physiological test point to him being superhuman), there are still revelations and human stories. Stories about how nasty, vindictive and bullying Armstrong was and stories of the toll on other members of the team.

Take this excerpt about  David Zabriskie:

Bruyneel was respected by Zabriskie whose father had died a few years before, his life shortened by drug addiction. Zabriskie had sought refuge in cycling. Long hard training rides were cathartic and provided an escape from the difficult home life associated with a parent with an addiction. He had vowed never to give in to the temptation to use, never to end up like his father, furtively using drugs to feed his dependency and eroding his physical health.Barry was about five years older than Zabriskie; however, Zabriskie had been on the USPS team a year longer. The group met at or near a café, and the conversation proceeded in English. Bruyneel got right to the point. He and del Moral had brought two injectable products for Zabriskie and Barry, something known as “recovery” and the banned oxygen booster, erythropoietin (known as “EPO”). Zabriskie was shocked.This was the beginning of David’s third year on the team and he had not realized he would be required to dope. He realized, of course, that some cyclists in the peloton and likely some teammates fueled their success with banned substances. However, until now he had been largely shielded from the reality of drug use on the U.S. Postal Service Team.Zabriskie began to ask questions. He was fearful of the health implications of using EPO, and he had a slew of questions: would he be able to have children? would it cause any physical changes? Would he grow larger ears? The questions continued. Bruyneel responded, “everyone is doing it.” Bruyneel assured that if EPO was dangerous no professional cyclists would be having kids.David was cornered. He had embraced cycling to escape a life seared by drugs and now he felt that he could not say no and stay in his mentor’s good graces. He looked to Barry for support but he did not find it. Barry’s mind was made up. Barry had decided to use EPO, and he reinforced Bruyneel’s opinions that EPO use was required for success in the peloton.The group retired to Barry’s apartment where both David and Barry were injected with EPO by Dr. del Moral. Thus began a new stage in David Zabriskie’s cycling career – the doping stage. Cycling was no longer David’s refuge from drugs. When he went back to his room that night he cried.

When I read testimony like that I think of the cyclists as the poor bloody infantry. They have taken all the heat and guilt and been the ones who have been punished. In the meantime the team managers and doctors carry on as normal. It was the system which was corrupt. Cyclists believed there was no other way (sure they could have walked away from the sport but that is very difficult if you have staked everything on being a top professional).

We might think top sportsmen are at the apex of achievement and satisfaction (and surely some are) and they are to be envied and emulated (and again surely some are) but the are just as much a part of a system, with its own pressures and responsibilities as anybody in any other line of work. Their highs may be more dramatic and the requirements more intense but they are still bound by a culture and responsibilities. Sometimes those demands are just too great, as I believe they were for cyclists in the Armstrong years.

We tend to view sports individualistically i.e the way a person performs and the choices they make and then investing some of ourselves in our favourites and then make black and white judgements. But we only see half the picture if we ignore the context and don’t recognise the system. In cycling I do not think everyone who doped was a despicable cheat. Instead I think some good people got caught up in something beyond their control. All sport should be simple but sometimes things can be complicated, especially if money is involved.

Which brings me back to the difference between recreational and elite sport. the tremendous privilege we have as amateurs is that it is actually us as individuals. We do what we do for our own satisfaction and for no other reason. We can choose how much we want to be part of a system e.g. if we join a club and what type of club, or we can run on our own. We are honest because it makes no sense to be otherwise. All that matters is a sense of achievement and increased self-knowledge. 

We should constantly celebrate our freedom

Zebra Finch

This is an inconsequential little post but I wanted to show one of the strangest sights I have come across on a trail. It was on a walk in a small nature reserve in Saintes and I was so busy looking up and around that I almost missed this tiny bird burrowing into the grass of the path. A tiny zebra finch, completely unfazed by the presence of people. We got close but it was not at all agitated. It carried on so calmly i began to wonder if it was incapable of flight but after a time it hopped up and flew to a nearby branch. So it was just used to people. It must have been a household pet escaped from its cage. I wonder how long it will last i the wild? 

Back from Holiday

Back from holiday and it is  time to get back to some blogging.

We went, as we do most years, to a small village in south west France not far from Cognac. and it is the best running country I know. A rolling, open landscape with few hedges but an occasional lines of trees and small areas of woodland. You can see for miles, the sky is big and the light wonderfully clear. Criss-crossing are plenty of small, empty roads that make planning a route of any distance a doddle. As the land is undulating there is always some challenge so you know you have done some work but without the grinding intimidation of really steep slopes. 

In the height of summer you have to get out early before it gets too hot but nearer to autumn there is more latitude. Getting out at 8 - 8:230 was just fine. Once out the feeling is one of peace. Obviously the landscape is highly cultivated and everywhere there is evidence of people and  their work but with hardly anybody about you can feel you are on your own. You can stretch out without any sense of being crowded, and it encourages you to look around. Overhead there are birds and I am particularly taken with a buzzard who patrols the area - it is his. But you don't have to look at anything in particular: the sense of openness is enough.

The picture shows another feature - the allotments scattered around all the villages. This is a reminder (even if this particular allotment has mostly been harvested) of what I like about France - the food. Not the most unusual of insights perhaps but nevertheless true. Whether it is the restaurants or the riot of colourful vegetables in the markets, there is much that tastes good. 

So there you have it, my holiday defined in one short sentence: run a bit and eat a lot. Perhaps not a recipe for tip top fitness but as a holiday plan there is a lot to recommend it.