Perhaps a ruthless Lance is the weapon we need

Watching Lance Armstrong successively “win” the Tour de France was stirring.

The intrigue of recent times has blunted somewhat the celebratory mood; intrigue arising from a deception of dimensions never before seen in elite sport.

There is, however, within that an inspiration that reaches beyond human artefact.

Millions around the world drew strength and courage, not to mention commitment and hope, from Armstrong’s well-chronicled confrontation with and survival from testicular cancer.

Armstrong cheated at cycling, but such trickery was not an option as he wrestled with the arcane reality of cancer.

Locked in a life and death wrestle with this so far unfathomable human killer, the man who was to become a hero to many, never blinked and the steely determination that enabled his survival, morphed, it seemed, into a purpose-driven cycling career in which the desire to win overrode decency and good sense.

Confronted with such an implacable adversary that is cancer, Armstrong employed whatever he could find in the medicinal armoury to win and it seems the “take no prisoners” attitude such a confrontation demanded worked, for years, without apparent fault in elite cycling.

What Armstrong did was unquestionably wrong, but without apologising for his behaviour, it is important to judge him in context of the time, his life and in losing our salvos of criticism, remember the Bible quote in which it is argued that he, who is without sin, should cast the first stone.

The doings of Armstrong were quite clearly wrong, offending the values most hold decent, filtering through cycling and leaking into other sports.

In the broad sweep of world events, the corruption of the sort inculcated by Armstrong is inconsequential compared to other happenings in which hundreds, if not millions of people, young and old, innocent and willing participants, died from hunger or political malfeasance and the perverse distortions heaped on others throughout the world, mostly the poor, by egoists driven by the flawed belief that happiness and contentment could be found in the accumulation of wealth and power.

Arguments of difference immediately enter the conversation, but at base the drivers are identical – the desire to succeed at the expense of others, whatever the cost.

Looking down from the commanding heights of success, Armstrong’s values and ideals, arising from the seemingly groundless jumble of principles that drive the commercial world, had such a hold on his psyche that the more he pedalled, the deeper he found himself in the intrigue.

Armstrong’s influence on cycling was majestical and being a cancer survivor with an intense force of personality, he had a magical hold over cycling and driving both counterparts and competitors to do distasteful things, just as a despot contrives to offend a population.

Many have stood beyond the present controversy arguing that it was Armstrong’s inspiration that saw them survive the trials of cancer. Armstrong was, a still is, for many the beacon that lead them through difficult times.

That however, does not give any legitimacy does nor give any sense of correctness to what Armstrong and his co-conspirators contrived as they demolished the field in successive Tours de France.

Watching Armstrong guide his team, it was described frequently by commentators as the “Blue Train” when he and fellow team-mates raced under the sponsorship of the U.S Postal Service, through the Tour de France and other similar events, was inspirational for despite his indiscretions, he demanded discipline and dedication; needed traits if humanity is to endure the difficulties ahead as civilisation wrestles with a burgeoning population and the depletion of finite resources and a changing climate.

The inevitable question arises as to whether or not Armstrong should have been stripped of his seven tour titles (he was) for with some in the events also proven drug users making the field, in a sense, level. However, it was not level as many; history has shown, competed without the aid of drugs.

That of course, introduces a further question – should those not using drugs have been elevated up the finishing order?

The controlling body of world cycling, the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI), appears eager to take cycling into a new drug-free era removing Armstrong from the record books and leaving the first place position for the tours, which he “won” from 1999 through to 2005, blank.

Armstrong orchestrated his seven-year deception through a mixture of discipline and a somewhat despotic approach to those around him – a mixture of ideals that might be essential if civilization is to endure the changes which will descend upon the world people exhaust the available finite resources and struggle to understand how they will tolerate a life made intolerably different and difficult by a changing climate.

Maybe Armstrong brought himself and world cycling into decided disrepute, but possibly as that drug-fuelled dilemma was unfolding, those of us watching closely were learning something about how we address the tumult that is tomorrow.