Unlearning What Lance Armstrong Taught Us
The fairytale of a cancer survivor conquering the world charmed (rather, fooled) us all. That he had nothing noteworthy during his pre-cancer years should have made us wary
For more than a decade and until recently, I was a die-hard fan of cyclist Lance Armstrong. A couple of days ago, I went through the United States Anti-Doping Agency’s (USADA) entire report which indicted him of doping and pushing his teammates to dope as well, for over eight years. And now, I no longer wish to be a foolish supporter or a romantic!
I have to admit that his extraordinary and sometimes magical achievements had blinded me. It prevented me from asking: How could there be God amongst humans? The Lance Armstrong phenomenon was much like Salomon Brothers and Enron, which were apparent ‘miracles’ and I’d believed them all too unquestioningly, until secrets tumbled out of the closet.
These are stories that management consultants bandy prematurely and make us believe that much before a cycle is over, the verdict is out. Yet, we hanker after these reports and gobble them up. I don’t doubt the fact that sometimes, people do end up doing something which is trend-defying.
But when someone like Armstrong achieved such staggering numbers in Tour de France, we should’ve been sceptical, especially when the murmurs had begun. The fairytale of a cancer survivor conquering the world charmed (rather, fooled) us all. That he had nothing noteworthy during his pre-cancer years should have made us wary. We prayed and wished for our own death-defying experience through a ‘surrogate’ Armstrong.
He told his US Postal Service (USPS) team, “We should win the world's toughest tour not once but keep winning it over and over again.” The winning obsession: This is where it all goes terribly wrong! Even Bradman got out for a duck; Federer loses rather tamely these days; Tiger Woods is struggling to find his magic back; Michael Schumacher got beaten at his best and the great Muhammad Ali lost to Norman and Fraser. Behind all fairytales, there lies an unrevealed truth.
The problem is trying to be God, like Armstrong did with his "winning forever" formula. Even Gods lose once in a while.
The 200-page USADA report is gut-wrenching: Not only did Armstrong dope, but also bullied, threatened and blackmailed his teammates to dope with him and not get tested. Tour De France and cycling as a sport is littered with cases of doping: Jan Ullrich to Alberto Contodor have been banned. But Armstrong invariably escaped being caught and thus prevented himself from being banned. What is queasy to note is, he contracted cancer due to the use of EPO (Erythropoietin – a performance-enhancing drug) and cortisones, but persisted with his obsession: Doping for winning.
The issue here is not about Armstrong alone. It is about what makes perfectly rational and intelligent people like us believe in fairytales to the extent of pushing ourselves to emulate them. Is it our delusion of God or merely a fame-fixation? Are we so desperate that we’re ready to cheat for winning? Dan Ariely's famously noted, “When I can get everybody to cheat then it is kosher.” Hence, the moot question is: Performance at what cost and by what means is acceptable?
This leads us to another important insight: When performance becomes an obsession from being just an aspiration and is sought without capability, or the humanly impossible is attempted out of vaulting ambition, or someone’s winning ways are misunderstood and blindly adopted, or teams are driven to win without ensuring any knowhow, or self-obsession and a hunger for fame is mistaken as aspiration, we end up in a shameful state in the future.
Armstrong is an excellent case study on what happens when humans overreach themselves and lose perspective. For him, like many of us, staying ahead of the peloton, even if it was only by means of dope, became an unhealthy obsession. We saw the foreground that was visible, and were bowled over by his supposed passion; while the background had much more to show us. Here was ‘Lance the God’ who we all wished to be. In his triumphs, we celebrated the victory of the human spirit over the fallible body.
The testimonies of his teammates Hincapie, Leipheimer, Landis, Andreu, and 16 others contained in the USADA report tell us what Lance inflicted on them: They were blinded by Armstrong and surrendered as victims. They were mere mortals offering their services to God. But these mortal teammates and their families never featured on cover pages of newspapers and magazines worldwide; they fed on crumbs (obtained from stage wins) for serving the master, only to be bullied and eventually left to rot.
My hero Lance Armstrog has crumbled into a pile of dust. And I ask: Does winning as an obsession make losing so fearful that we’re prepared to embrace dishonour on a later date?
(The author is Executive Director on the board of ICICI Bank. He is responsible for HR, Customer Service and Operations)
