Winning At Any Cost

Training, discipline and dedication once carried Jesse Owens all the way to Nazi Germany, where right before Adolph Hitler, he shattered world records and the myth of white and Aryan supremacy. Now it’s just about the dollars—Win at any cost.

EDITORIAL

Floyd Landis, who won the prestigious Tour de France last year then tested positive for performance enhancing drugs, is a despicable human being.

Landis had protested vehemently saying he was innocent, even though there’s no other  explanation for the excessive levels of  Testosterone found in his system.

Consider this: A 4- to-1 Testosterone to Epitestosterone level is considered excessive; Landis’ level was 11-1. Trailing badly at the Tour last year, Landis had come out of nowhere to destroy other competitors at stage 17 of the grueling race. Afterwards, his failed test was revealed.

The next day, legendary cyclist Greg Lemond, a three-time winner of the race spoke with Landis, who had called him to find out why Lemond wasn’t saying nice things about him. According to Lemond, he told Landis that if, indeed, he was guilty of doping, he should come clean.

Landis’ revelation would help restore cycling’s reputation: Landis was only 30 and would later regret the toll doping could take on his body, Lemond told him. Moreover, living with a secret, even a shameful one, carries a heavy toll. Lemond told Landis about a secret that he had carried for years –that he had been sexually abused when he was a six year old.

So what does this want-to-be-great athlete Landis do? He shares this information with his manager Will Geoghan, who this week called Lemond to intimidate him from testifying against Landis. There’s a hearing now being held in Malibu, where a three member arbitration body is hearing Landis’ appeal against the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) and the Montreal Doping Agency.

The USADA had invited Lemond to recount his conversation last year with Landis—instead, Geoghan had called Lemond, told him he was his uncle and mentioned something about his “weewie� and a sex act. It doesn’t get lower than this. All this just so Landis can avoid confessing that he doped? He wouldn’t be the first person to have been exposed as a doper.

Doping is now so widespread in professional athletics –from football, track and field, boxing, and baseball – that HBO’s “Real Sports� recently aired a show about doping of horses. Get this – it’s not the jockeys who inject themselves with performance enhancing drugs: the horses are shot up. What manner of depravity is this? The drugs dull pain and some horses continue racing even with broken bones—soon the horses can barely walk.

The days of the pure athlete is long gone. Training, discipline and dedication once carried Jesse Owens all the way to Nazi Germany, where right before Adolph Hitler, he shattered world records and the myth of white and Aryan supremacy.

Now it’s just about the dollars—Win at any cost.

 

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