In Never-Ending Cycle of Heroes, It’s a Long Climb to Recognition

I don’t have a graceful way of starting this column, except to say that we ought to be paying more attention to what Lance Armstrong is doing. I know that nobody’s rushing home to see “Monday Night Cycling.” There’s no National Cycling League, no playoffs, no draft--no Mel Kiper, no Madden Cruiser. I know it’s a tough sell.

We’ve got buckets of words, I mean buckets of words, devoted every day to some guy who has come back from a torn rotator cuff to get three outs in the ninth inning--or to some other guy who missed all of last season with a torn ACL, who’s now running a 4.45 40, and looks like he has a shot to start at running back again. And not to diminish their stories, but what Lance Armstrong is doing is unbelievable.

Here in the sports business we tend to exaggerate somebody’s strengths and flaws for the sake of drama. Because the appeal of sports is the drama. That’s why we’re there--to see who triumphs and who fails under pressure. Can the quarterback throw a perfect pass into the end zone on the final play of the game? Can the golfer sink a 15-foot putt on the 18th hole to win the tournament? Can the batter deliver a hit, and win the game with the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth?

And if he does, we make him a hero. We reward him with stature out of proportion for what he has really done. We lose sight of the fact that it’s just a game, and there’s another one tomorrow. With every new game we create a world of heroes and villains. Every season there’s another story of some team and some player that’s been blessed by the gods with health and fortune--an improbable champion, a Cinderella story.

Sometimes in the midst of trying to capture the drama maybe we mistake accomplishment for character. Sometimes we exaggerate a player’s circumstance, and what he has had to overcome. For example, we might call a particularly bad injury a “tragedy.” We might say that because someone was playing minor league football one year, and the next year he was the MVP of the Super Bowl, he was “inspirational.”

Stanley Woodward, the legendary sports editor of the old New York Herald Tribune, used to caution his staff to beware of “godding up” the players. And it is with that warning echoing in my head that I still say: How ‘bout Lance Armstrong?

He’s on his way to winning the Tour de France for the second consecutive year. Now we are all aware Armstrong is recovering from cancer, and that Armstrong’s cancer was so severe doctors feared he might not survive. Each of us knows someone who has had chemotherapy, and how physically and emotionally debilitating it is.

This guy is winning the Tour de France again. This guy is hot stuff.

The Tour de France has to be the most grueling sporting event in the world. Please don’t tell me how hard NFL training camp is. Please don’t tell me about two-a-days, and how much water weight Tre Johnson and Jon Jansen are going to sweat off. Day after day for three weeks in the Tour de France they ride bicycles up mountains, down valleys and over hillsides, 100 miles a pop at impossible speeds through every conceivable weather condition. It’s torture. You think hitting a blocking sled is more demanding than that? Please. Get a life.

And where is Armstrong winning this race? Where is his strength?

On the climbs.

Where it’s all about strength and desire.

Have you any idea how hard it is to pedal uphill? I get winded driving uphill.

There are great stories about athletes returning to play after serious illness; Andres Galarraga and Eric Davis coming back to play baseball after learning they had cancer, for example. But Galarraga would have to hit 70 homers, and Davis would have had to win the Triple Crown to compare with what Armstrong is doing. Casey Martin would have to win the U.S. Open, and maybe the Masters, too.

While we’re at it, Marla Runyan, the runner who qualified for the U.S. Olympic team in the 1,500 despite being legally blind, sounds heroic, too. There are lots of stories about poor kids overcoming disadvantaged backgrounds to succeed at sports, and people who have been told they are too short or too slow or too this or too that to make the team, and then they become big stars. But this woman has macular degeneration, and she can hardly see 10 feet in front of her. It’s like she is in a perpetual fog. I know how unsteady that can make your movement; there’s a history of macular degeneration in my family. It’s amazing she can run 1,500 meters at all, let alone run fast enough to make the Olympic team. (Obviously, there’s the worry that Runyan might get in some sort of train wreck during her Olympic races. But Mary Decker and Zola Budd got in one, and they had 20/20 vision.)

I wouldn’t know Lance Armstrong if he was delivering my mail. I couldn’t pick him out of a lineup with the Pet Shop Boys. Tiger Woods is a different deal. Everyone knows Tiger, and all eyes are on Tiger this week as he goes after the British Open. Tiger is the most charismatic athlete out there. The distance he has put between himself and everybody else in his sport is as high as a mountain, as deep as an ocean. There’s not a street in America Tiger could walk down and not be applauded--deservedly so. It’s nice to imagine that someday Lance Armstrong might pedal along a few of those streets and hear the same sort of cheers.