Doping Evokes 'Roid Rage

Suddenly, everywhere you look, every day of the week, there’s another name being linked to steroids.

It used to be just those crazy East Germans swimmers and that Canadian sprinter, Ben Johnson, who no one would remember had he not lost his gold medal after failing a drug test. But now the names of prominent American athletes are linked to doping conspiracies on a scarily routine basis.

There’s Barry Bonds and the BALCO bunch of Giambi and Sheffield. And of course U.S. track stars Tim Montgomery and Marion Jones, who just about sealed any doubt that they were actually doping after turning in abysmal performances at the U.S. Olympic trials after dominating those events for years. But most disturbing of all is the case of Lance Armstrong.

I don’t say that Armstrong is the most disturbing case because I’m a cycling enthusiast (I can barely ride a bike), but rather he is a real life role model, a true American hero. Moreover, Armstrong has positioned himself in books, commercials even movies as a role model, a beacon of hope to those battling illnesses such as cancer.

But now, according to a French novel and fellow American cyclist Greg LeMond, that monumental comeback that we all viewed as so exciting and spiritually gripping, and more incredibly, made me shed a tear over a cycling event that I find impossibly painful to watch, is a total fraud. Is Armstrong the hero really Armstrong the cheater?

One of the reasons I’ve yet to accept the notion that Armstrong has doped is because they test for this stuff, allegedly, routinely. How could he possibly be doping, when other riders are tossed out of the race every year, if they haven’t caught him? How can LeMond’s statement claiming Armstrong told him that EPO (erythropoietin) was rampant in the biking circuit be accurate, if there aren’t huge expulsions of bikers on an equally routine basis. Same goes for Marion Jones and Tim Montgomery, how can they be taking drugs if they’re supposedly being checked for it? In baseball I can see how anyone (more than 5%, as last year’s testing concluded) can get away with it because they don’t have standardized drug testing (thank you Donald Fehr). But clearly if a league or governing body of a sport is facing this kind of dilemma, where allegations are flying and there’s no proof either way, whatever testing their doing isn’t strict enough.

Now, I’m not a scientist and I don’t know what needs to happen to make sure that everyone is running, riding or playing on an equal field, but I can tell you that I’m sick and tired of this double standard held up by athletes like Bonds who refuse to take a drug test on a regular or random basis as part of a new collective bargaining agreement but then lash out every time the media mentions his or her name in conjunction with the subject. If athletes want to avoid that label, they better agree to stricter testing. Otherwise get used to the rumors, because they aren’t going anywhere.

While I don’t know a solution to the problem, I do know why it has to be solved.

When you’re facing a battle like cancer, a battle that seems impossible to win, you need something to convince you, not only that there’s a higher power, but that there’s a higher power inside us. Something that gives us hope that we can overcome such a grueling trial, that we can climb the long road back and after a while be riding there next to Lance.

That’s the thought going through each of those boys and girls in the cancer ward as they run to the window to watch him streak by and wave in that Nike commercial. If he can do it, so can they. But if he didn’t do it, not without steroids or EPO or some other foreign substance that they could never and should never obtain, what then?

There’s so little magic left in this world. So few untainted dreams. Part of the reason I got into sports was because there was a disproportional amount of magical moments to be experienced or written about on the playing fields. Last second field goals, bottom of the ninth walk-off home runs, Immaculate Receptions, Miracles on Ice.

But as I watch all of the magic stripped away from world records and home run chases because of steroid conjecture it just makes me mad. And it ought to make everyone, athletes and fans alike, equally angry. Because our heroes, be they Barry, Marion, or Lance, are letting us down, leaving us with a hollow void in our hearts, that same chamber that holds our last dying belief in magic.

And I wonder how much worse it would be for those little boys and girls in the window in that Nike commercial. What will happen to them if their hero’s a fake? Will they still believe in miracles?

I get mad that I even have to ask that question. I hope I never have to learn that answer. And I hope, in time, I won’t have to ask that question again.