Now she stood in front of U.S. District Court Judge Kenneth Karas, about to be sentenced to jail for lying about her use of performance-enhancing drugs. Not everybody is Roger Clemens and beats the rap on drugs.
And if you don’t remember what Judge Karas said to Marion Jones that day in White Plains, here is what he said, to Jones and everybody else:
People live with their choices. The choice not to play by the rules was compounded by her choice not to tell the truth.”
Judge Karas also said this:
“(It’s) a very difficult thing to believe that a top-notch athlete, knowing that a razor-thin margin makes the difference, would not be keenly aware and very careful about what he or she put in her body and the effects,” Karas said, referring to such an explanation by athletes as the “worldwide lie.”
This isn’t about why athletes use drugs to get bigger and faster and stronger and richer. We get that.
This is about the lies they tell before and after they are caught, all the way from home run hitters in baseball to Marion Jones to Lance Armstrong, who now gives up his fight and his case against the United States Anti-Doping Agency and is stripped of his Tour de France titles forever.
As of Thursday night, Armstrong lets the deadline for choosing arbitration as a way of fighting the USADA charges that he was a blood-doper — and thus a career liar — while he was winning seven Tour de France titles pass. In that moment, Armstrong is no longer just the great cycling champion who thrilled us all with his story about beating cancer, effectively rode into the Champs-Elysees and all the way to the top of the world. He officially becomes part of the worldwide lie that Judge Karas spoke about in court to Marion Jones.
Armstrong will try to make himself a victim. Say that he is a victim of the USADA and former teammates, had no chance to beat the rap, deck stacked against him, all that. He fought charges of being just another doper on a bike for a long time and now he stops fighting. Will try to make himself the Jim Thorpe of his sport, wrongly stripped of his titles the way Thorpe was stripped of his gold medals nearly 100 years ago in the Olympics.
But if USADA is right and Armstrong’s former teammates are right, then he is nowhere being the true victim Thorpe was. Even if one of the things he ends up losing is the bronze medal he won once at the Sydney Olympics. Marion Jones’ Olympics.
If you have followed Armstrong the way the other riders followed him, you know how aggressive he has been for so long, how litigious he has been, as he protected his legacy, his brand. Or maybe just the myth he created about himself, that he was different, braver, better, cleaner than all the other guys in the race.
If you accused him of being no better than all the other dopers in the race, Armstrong went after you good and mean and hard. It was as if he had only one style, for everything.
Greg LeMond — who now becomes the only American to officially win the Tour de France — took on Armstrong and Armstrong did everything possible to run him over. Armstrong went after LeMond in public, and privately, as if LeMond was the one who had committed some crime of their sport because he had questioned Armstrong, who was in the process of raising millions and millions of dollars through his Livestrong foundation to fight cancer.
There is, and will always be, a great and lasting truth that Armstrong has raised millions and helped millions. And there will be the argument that however Armstrong got there — and however he got to the Champs-Elysees first — was worth it.
But if Lance Armstrong, stripped now of his titles, doped and lied and built his empire on a lie, how does anybody ever think he was better and braver and cleaner ever again?
How is Lance Armstrong any better than any other athlete who cheated and finally got caught and then wanted you to feel real sorry for them afterward?
A bigger question for Armstrong is how much legal liability he has. There was a time when he sued a company called SCA Promotions, a Dallas insurer of bonuses for performance in sports, saying he was owed $5 million for one of his last Tour de France titles. Oh, you bet Armstrong sued. Went to arbitration. And won. Ended up walking away with $7.5 million, all in, legal fees and the rest. SCA has already informed Armstrong it has been closely watching the USADA case. It’s going to want its money back.
There is also a complicated whistleblower lawsuit filed by Floyd Landis, another disgraced former Tour de France winner, against Armstrong and others, the suit stating that Armstrong defrauded the U.S. Postal Service, which was one of his sponsors once, and paid him between $60 million and $80 million at the height of his fame. Armstrong, of course, will say what Barry Bonds and Clemens said, that chasing sports stars over drugs is a waste of taxpayer money. But what about all that money the U.S. Postal Service paid to Lance Armstrong?
Livestrong, Armstrong’s foundation, has already been damaged by this, even as its lobbyists have been in Washington, attacking the USADA the way Armstrong has always attacked his accusers. Livestrong will go on for now. Armstrong may go on forever, a different kind of celebrity now. And will likely have a longer career as a victim than he did on his bike, not trying to outrace the field this time. Just the worldwide lie.
