Livestrong?

So Lance Armstrong finally came clean that he in fact was dirty. He admitted to doping during his cycling career in an interview with Oprah Winfrey on Monday. Oprah questioned Armstrong extensively for two-and-a-half hours. The interview will be broadcast later this week on OWN.

Understandably, the Armstrong legacy is being tarnished from this doping allegation and now admission. However, it's the collateral damage that severely bothers me regarding Lance Armstrong.

Armstrong’s career, and life in general, over the past two decades has been chaotic to say the least. He began his professional cycling career in 1992 and slowly began escalating into a top-notch athlete. He won Stage 18 in the 1995 Tour de France (his second career stage victory in the Tour de France) and the following year finished sixth in the time trial event in the Olympic Games. Things were looking great for the young Texan.

Just a couple of months later, the 25-year-old cyclist was diagnosed with stage three testicular cancer, which had spread to his lungs and his brain.  He had immediate surgery to remove a tumor, and even after the surgery he was given a less-than-40% chance to live.

When he announced that he had cancer, nearly the entire country asked the question “Who is Lance Armstrong?” Back then, cycling just did not have the appeal in the United States (much like futbol or Formula One today) because of the lack of a star American in the game. However, that would change when Armstrong returned for the 1999 Tour de France and won the yellow jersey. All of a sudden, every American, rightfully so, knew the name Lance Armstrong. And everybody knew his story: the man who survived cancer and did the impossible: win in arguably the most grueling professional sport out there.

He became an inspiration to Americans and to cancer patients around the world. That inspiration grew each year as he kept winning, defeating the best the world had to offer. Seven straight years he wore the yellow jersey riding into Paris. He announced his retirement after the 2005 Tour de France victory.

And the circus began (or continued to begin). Doping allegations had begun as early as 2004 (and probably earlier) and led many to question how good Lance Armstrong truly was. He eventually decided to return to cycling in 2009 and had his blood test results posted online for the world to see. He wanted everybody to see that he was clean and could still win. In the 2009 Tour de France, he ended up .22 seconds away from wearing the yellow jersey after the fourth stage. He ended up finishing third overall behind teammate Alberto Contador. He could still compete with the best, clean and three years out of the game.

But we know how the story ends: the US Anti-Doping Agency found evidence that Armstrong had taken performance-enhancing drugs, and the UCI stripped Armstrong of his Tour de France titles and banned him from the sport for life.

Turns out that he not only used PEDs during his cycling career, but he set up one of the largest doping rings in sports. “Collateral damage” included a massage therapist being labeled as a prostitute and suing her for money she could not spend, all to discredit her if she were to ever try to testify against Armstrong.

Here’s the question that everybody will ask though….. was it worth it?

Now the immediate gut-reaction is that there is absolutely nothing good that came out of this whole scandal over the past 15 years.  I can’t argue with that. This is one of the darkest hours in sports, as what was once considered a “witch hunt” against a popular, successful athlete actually proved to be true.

However, maybe good came out of it?  Could that “collateral damage” to Armstrong, the massage therapist, cycling, and Americans in general be worth the thousands of lives saved?

Without Lance Armstrong’s success, there is no Livestrong program. There is no cancer foundation created that has saved who-knows-how-many lives. He was (and to many, still is) an inspiration to those with cancer. How many lives did Armstrong save, not even due to the foundation, but to his personal story of triumph over adversity? Even if it is only one life, it could be worth it.

There are still millions of Livestrong bracelets out there, and even though the foundation has cut ties with its founder, I don’t think there are many out there who don’t associate Livestrong with Armstrong.

But many now say they will never wear a Livestrong bracelet again? You’re not supporting Armstrong by wearing those yellow bracelets. You’re supporting the battle against cancer.

If you don’t support a great organization like that because of one person, then you truly need to rethink things. That’s like people claiming they won’t support Penn State’s dance maraTHON in support of pediatric cancer research because a man named Jerry Sandusky coached there. Non sequitur, people. It does not follow.

What's wrong with sports? They dictate much larger and more important things in this world.

Support great programs. Don’t let there be MORE collateral damage.