The Zen Koan that is Lance

As baseball fan, an occasional marathon and other track and field events enthusiast, and as an even more casual cycling fan, I've been reminded a lot of steroids issues lately. Lance Armstrong is riding again, and every one and their kid sister seems to have an opinion about Lance the person, Lance the cyclist, and Lance the alleged doper. Manny Ramirez has returned to play for the Dodgers after being suspended for 50 games; apparently he was taking a female fertility drug that 'roiders use when they come off a cycle.

There's probably not much I can add to these discussions. I have a hard time getting self-righteously indignant about doping anymore; it simply happens too often, and it's too exhausting to get upset that often. On the other hand I have a hard time blowing it off as 'that's what athletes do these days to compete' the way that some fans seem to have coped with it.

But on the new Slate sports gabfest, one of the commentators pointed out that we--as the sports watching populace--tend to treat these people differently based on whether we liked them before they got caught on steroids. Alex Rodridguez gets caught--no one liked him to begin with, so we come down on him like a ton of bricks. Manny does it, and we make jokes about the fact that even the drug he gets caught with is typical of his flaky weirdness. And we're thrilled when he starts hitting home runs in Dodger stadium again.

Which brings me to the strange phenomenon of Lance Armstrong. I can't think of any athlete who inspires--at least in me, anyway--the strange mixture of admiration and repulsion. There's enough circumstantial evidence that it's difficult for me to believe that he hasn't played around with EPO on occasion. And he's arrogant enough; he reminds you of high school jocks who thought that mastering their particular sport made them superior human beings in every respect. But at the same time, he has this odd redeeming quality. The cancer scare really seems to have got to him, and I believe him when he says that he is riding for cancer patients. There's something really off putting about the messiah complex so obvious in a commercial like "Driven;" there's something appealing about an athlete doing something in addition to trying to notch another victory. Make no mistake about it: Lance intends to win his eighth Tour de France. But make no mistake about it; he also really believes he's doing it for the 12 year old recovering from cancer.