What do Dave Cowens, Rebecca Twigg, Lance Armstrong and Theo Nonnez have in common?
Because you're reading this blog, you certainly know about Lance and probably have heard of Rebecca. Unless you're a basketball fan (which is practically synonymous with being a New Yorker of my generation), you might not know about Dave Cowens.
As for Monsieur Nonnez--well, you might not know anything about him (except that he's French) unless you avidly follow bike racing.
OK...So what do they share? No, not needles, Lance's revelation notwithstanding. They all did something almost nobody expected of them: They walked away from their careers as world-class (or, in Nonnez's case, potentially world-class) athletes.
Dave Cowens was perhaps the greatest "undersized" (Where else but in the NBA is 6'9" "small"?) center in the history of the game. As a New Yorker, I am not a fan of the team for which he played most of his career--the Boston Celtics. I am enough of a basketball fan, however, to respect him: He simply never seemed to play a bad game.
In the middle of the 1976-77 season--just a few months removed from his team's most recent championship--he took a leave of absence "for personal reasons." There was no contract dispute or feud with a coach or team management: He simply needed to, as we might say today, re-set. The term "burnout" wasn't yet in wide use, but if you read accounts of that time, it's pretty clear that's what he was suffering.
So it was for Rebecca Twigg a decade later. Three years after winning a silver Olympic medal in the road race, she crashed--literally and metaphorically. A misaligned rear wheel led to a mishap in which she was lucky to emerge with a broken thumb and mild concussion. At the time, she said she was tired of waking up early, regardless of the weather, and pushing her body to its limits. She took time to complete degrees and start a new career in information technology before deciding she needed to be on her bike again. And she did so in a rather big way, winning another Olympic medal in Barcelona in 1992.
(Unfortuantely, she "crashed" again and has been homeless for the past few years.)
Now, I know it's not fashionable to talk about Lance without bashing him, but here goes: He, of course, quit racing for two years after his cancer diagnosis. But, before he confessed to Oprah, he talked about how he considered retiring after his fifth Tour de France win. Had he not "juiced," he would have been, in at least one sense, in elite company: Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Mercx, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Indurain reached that magic milestone. (They all won other races, including the Giro d'Italia, Vuelta a Esapana, some of the "classics," and various other cycling events, so even if Lance didn't have his wins vacated, I don't believe he wouldn't have been in their class.) He spoke of something similar to what Twigg described: He was tired of a life that revolved around training. Few people outside the sport realize what a singular, solitary existence bike racing is.
That's what Theo Nonnez learned. What he also said is, in essence, that if you realize that you're not willing to give up literally everything else in your life--including relationships and the foods most other people eat--you probably won't reach the heights of the folks I've mentioned. You really have to want to be a champion more than anything else--possibly life itself--in order to keep yourself so motivated.
My previous sentence may well explain why Cowens took his leave, Armstrong almost quit and Twigg did, for a time. I think it might also explain why she "crashed" in life: After pursuing something so single-mindedly, and not having another suitable outlet for your adrenaline (IT?), it's easy to burn out on life, if you will.
Again, in my unfashionable all-but-defense of Lance, I think it might explain why some athletes cheat: When you compete against someone who's spent his or her life pursuing the same goal you've devoted your life to pursuing, and the difference between you and that person is a second, or a stroke of bad luck (an accident, say), the temptation to grasp at any possible advantage, however illegal or unethical it may be, is great.
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| Theo Nonnez |
I think Theo Nonnez may have seen these possibilties. What he did say is that he realized, even after winning a junior championship, cycling wasn't the right career choice for him, and that he was pursuing it in part because of the hopes and expectations of people around him. Je me suis mis a pleurer sur le velo--"I began to cry on the bicycle"--he reports in the tweet announcing his retirement. He has not announced concrete plans, but says he wants to help others.
If all of that is true--and I can't find any reason to doubt him-- Theo Nonnez is wise beyond his 21 years. Best of all, he's still young enough to come back if he changes his mind a few months or a year from now. (He shouldn't wait too long, though: An athlete's career is brief!) Whatever he does, he's already a winner, and I wish him well.
