On Thursday the the airing of Lance Armstrong's confession to doping will hit TV screens worldwide, made possible by Oprah Winfrey. Armstrong has caved in to all the pressure demanding the truth regarding the doping allegations, the details are not clear yet but all will be made transparent on Thursday.
This will be a sad day for sport as Armstrong was due to go down in sporting history not just as a great cyclist but one of the greatest sportsmen. He holds the record for the number of Tour de France wins with 7 consecutive titles which have recently been stripped as the world anti doping agency (WADA) found him guilt of taking sports enhancing drugs. He has always denied these allegations until now and his confession to Winfrey.
Armstrong was being placed under huge pressure to come clean as he had not only been stripped off all his titles but endorsement deals were falling by the waist side. Just recently several ex-teammates have gone public to admit to Armstrong's guilt further hiking up the pressure. Taking drugs is bad enough but it's the way Armstrong has gone about to clean his name that hurts even more. As a teacher and coach the biggest quality I preach is not any particular skill or ability but honesty, honesty is the greatest gift anyone can give. Armstrong has sued and won millions of pounds from people such as the UK Sunday Times who have accused him of taking sports enhancing drugs. This not only tarnishes any sporting legacy but any legacy as a human being.
Armstrong on the other hand can still be viewed as a super human. We will never quiet know how great a cycler he was but I think we can imagine he was more than half decent. Regardless of the doping he did fight of multiple cases of cancer and go on to compete at a high level, giving hope to many cancer sufferers. This for any human is super human and should be remembered for the lives he has given hope to.
While I'm sure the media will concentrate on Armstrong the villain which I'm not for one minute denying this, I can see the opportunity in everything, including this. Armstrong can become the face of a campaign, a campaign that has got a bad reputation and needs a public face. He could be the face of sporting anti doping cases, speaking to young athletes about the dangers and problems of taking sports enhancing drugs promoting fair competition. From this with Armstrong's commitment he can go a long way to building a positive image, for those doubters look no further than Michael Vick.
Armstrong will always be removed from my greatest sportsmen list and now be a case study when I teach doping to my GCSE PE classes. He can though take this as an opportunity, he can help prevent doping across all sports and continue his great work with the Livestrong foundation supporting cancer patients. On Thursday the darkest of ashes may be made but I have a feeling Armstrong can rise from these ashes.
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