What Do They Need To Believe?

Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I believe that the first major work of American fiction in the new millennium was The 9/11 Commission Report.

If that is the case, then the last major work of American fiction of the previous century may well be It's Not About The Bike.  And another major work of American fiction from this millenium may well be Positively False.

Matt Hart did not echo my opinion about The 9/11 Commission Report in his Atlantic Monthly article last month. He did, however, say that INATB and PF are narratives that "now read more like fiction" than the autobiographical narratives they purported to be.

Now, I'll make a confession:  I was a Lance fanboy/fangirl (I underwent my transition during the time Lance was racing.) almost until the time Oprah interviewed him.  At least, I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt because--call me naive--I still adhere to the principle of "innocent until proven guilty."  Though the rumors echoed everywhere (or so it seemed), he had not failed any drug tests--or, if he did, the results hadn't been made public.

I started to entertain doubts about him a couple months before the interview, when the US Anti-Doping Agency released its report. Even then, I took the stories about Lance's doping with a grain of salt because many of the accusations came from his rivals, including Tyler Hamilton and, yes, Landis.  

Armstrong and Landis in the 2004 Tour de France.

Reading Hart's article didn't change my opinion about any of those riders, the USADA's report or the whole sad story.  If anything, it re-enforced something I already believed:  that Tour de France, UCI and other officials looked the other way while those riders were doping, much as Major League Baseball did when bulked-up players like Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds shattered home run records.  

In 1998, MLB was in a very similar position to that of professional bicycle racing:  Both were trying to recover from public relations fiascos.   The Festina team was expelled from the Tour de France that July for doping and the team's soigneur was arrested as he re-entered France from Belgium.  People were understandably upset and angry:  They felt betrayed by athletes they, if not idolized, then at least admired.

For the previous few years, US baseball fans felt betrayed, but for a different reason:  the players went on strike in August of 1994, cutting the season short by nearly two months.  Worst of all, in fans' eyes, there was no World Series that year for the first time in nearly a century.  The strike continued long enough to delay the 1995 season opening.  When play resumed, resentful fans stayed away through the rest of that season, and the two that followed.

So, MLB and the UCI were faced with a similar problem:  bringing the fans back.  That is why I believe both organizations did nothing while McGwire, Armstrong and others were "juicing".  McGwire's epic season, in which he and Sammy Sosa battled to become baseball's new home-run king, generated excitement and brought fans back to the park.  The following year, the story of Lance rising from his deathbed to the peaks of hors de categorie climbs in the Tours piqued interest in old and new cycling fans, especially in the US.  Skeptics--especially those in France--were seen as resentful curmudgeons who simply couldn't accept a brash American winning the Tour.

Although Hart paints Landis more sympathetically than he does Armstrong, it's clear from the articles that there are no heroes in the whole sordid saga of professional bicycle racing in the past two decades. 

It's been said that we tell the stories we need to believe--or have others believe. (Every nation in history has done this.)  Perhaps the sport, and others, will find another compelling story to get people interested again.  Then, if that story--like Lance's--is revealed to be that of a cheat and liar, or simply a fiction, some fans will walk away but those who remain simply won't trust the athletes or sport as they once did.  Thus, it remains to be seen whether those sports and leagues* will ever emerge from the cloud of suspicion that shrouds them. 

*--As bad as the UCI is, it can be argued that FIFA, the International Olympic Committee and other sports authorities are even more corrupt.

Why Should Cyclists Care About The FIFA Scandal?

In a previous post, I mentioned that the worlds of cycling and what most of the world calls “football” (but most Americans call “soccer”) are so close but never quite meet.  Some of the world’s most cycling-intensive nations also happen to be football powerhouses and some countries in the Americas are emerging in both.  (The US has elite athletes and teams in both sports but, on the whole, isn’t quite on the level of, say, Belgium, Italy, Spain, France or England in either one.)  I got to thinking about the relationship between the two sports again in light of FIFA’s current troubles.

Although I'm not as avid about them as I once was, I still love sports.  I have competed in three (wrestling, soccer and, of course, cycling) and have been a cyclist in one form or another for most of my life.  I even wrote about sports for a small local newspaper.  To this day, some of the things of which I’m most proud are things I’ve done in athletic pursuits. 

I must also point out that I have never participated in any athletic endeavor for money.  That doesn’t make me more virtuous or prove my love of sports or much of anything else.  However, I also realize that having always been an amateur—and having participated in sports that, at the times I was involved with them, offered few opportunities for scholarships, let alone professional careers—I never had an incentive to cheat.  Nor did most of those I competed with and against.  Likewise, my coaches and others involved in officiating contests or administering programs in which I was involved were not tempted by the prospect of payoffs or bribes of one kind or another.

That perspective—and my experience writing about sports—helped me to understand that when money, especially large sums of it, are involved, the attitude of everyone involved with sport changes.  It’s almost trite to say that money corrupts, and large sums corrupt in major ways.  To be more exact, the prospect of a large payoff exposes avarice that might lay dormant in the absence of lucre.

What I find ironic is that nearly every fan of any professional sport acknowledges that corruption exists, at whatever level, but he or she is almost invariably shocked when that corruption is exposed.  For all the whispers that Lance Armstrong, the Festina team and any number of other riders and teams were doping, when that doping was exposed or confessed, fans expressed a sense of betrayal.  Likewise, nearly every soccer/football fan believes that the sport’s officials and governing bodies are corrupt. (Most people also have the same sense about Olympic organizations.)  But some still said the equivalent of “no…really” when Sepp Blatter and others were implicated in various kinds of graft related to the awarding of the World Cup to the countries that hosted the tournament.

 

One interesting difference I’ve noticed between cycling and football/soccer is that in cycling, the investigations, accusations and crackdowns have focused on individual cyclists and teams, while in football, prosecutors’ sights have been set on the governing bodies and top-level officials.  Of course, one reason for that is that the scandals in cycling have had mainly to do with doping, or allegations thereof, while those in football have had to do with kickbacks and awarding tournaments to countries. 

Why has relatively little attention been paid to cycling’s governing bodies?  Surely, their officials must have known about doping, or the rumors of it.  It’s also hard not to imagine that in the administration of cycling, there are money scandals and nepotism similar to what is found in FIFA and football’s governing bodies in individual countries.  I mean, if corrupt officials can take bribes to allow Russia or Qatar or some other country to host the World Cup, it’s hard not to believe that similar (though smaller-scale) deals are made so that cities can host stages of multi-day races or for facilities to be built for cycling.  Likewise, if cyclists are doping and their teams and sponsors are pressuring them to do so, who’s to say that something similar isn’t happening in football?  After all, as in cycling, the world’s best athletes are competing in it, and the difference between victory or relegation could be laid to something as seemingly trivial as whether a key performer drank one glass too many or too few of water on the day of the competition.

And, as I have mentioned, there is a lot of money riding on the siting as well as the outcomes of competitions in both sports.  The incentives exist for cheating and corruption, and are so similar in so many ways in cycling and football.  But, in that regard, as in so many other aspects, the worlds of the two sports are so close but somehow manage not to meet.