So it looks like the Tour De France winner was "allegedly" doping. Of course of course, he's the victim of bad meat... just like that ball player blamed his Dr and the olympic gymnast blamed the cold medicine. And what I keep coming back to is, To what End?
Why do you cheat to win something like the Tour De France? Money? Is it really about the money? What satisfaction do you get out of not really winning it on your own? I think it would be empty. I think on some level you would always rot a little inside knowing you shouldn't have won, but of course, if you lie about it you get a sponsorship and if you come clean, you probably lose the sponsorship and have to pay some big fines and junk. So, I guess I get it. It's GREED. At the international level (be it olympic or biking or whatnot), if you dope to win, you might still walk away with $ or a sponsorship.
So a while ago I read a blog about someone who saw a woman not finish the out and back on a 5K. Where is the satisfaction from winning a 5K, if you didn't really WIN IT? I mean, there's no real money in winning a local charity 5K race. That's just silly. At a local level race you're really competing for bragging rights, aren't you? And where is the fun of "winning bragging rights", if you didn't really win them?
I think back to my first 5K, and how SLOW it was, and you know what? I was SO STINKING PROUD of that finish! I was HIGH on it. I earned it. I owned it. I knew in that moment that I would never win one of those races, and hell, I would never even "beat" my friends, but damn-it, I was still so proud of my accomplishment.
It makes me sad to read about these "false" players in the world of sports who don't appreciate their own sense of self. It does. Because if they were proud of themselves, they would never allow themselves to be "tainted" by bad meat, or accidental doping, or even, cut a 5K short on the path to a better PR.
5 comments:
LOVE LOVE this post!! I wrote about the 5K person who won but did not run the full course...
I think people put too much pressure on themselves to be perfect that they have some weird internal gauge that lets them turn off the Jimminie (sp?) Cricket on their shoulder. Right and Wrong are blurred and somehow they convince themselves that the end result is the most important things, regardless of what they have to do to get there.
I will run EVERY STEP of a race, the idea of cutting it short is totally CRAZY to me and I am still baffled by SOME who would not run the full course..
:)
Great post....and I did finish that 5K... LOL!
Money changes many people into something I don't think they can be proud of.
I've never seen anyone cut a race short. (I've been with lots who added distance, i.e., got lost) I wouldn't understand why anyone would race ONLY to cheat and "win" a AG place or even an overall. After all the training and work I don't understand someone who would let themselves down by cheating. No one likes when they have a bad running day esp. when it happens on RACE day but the cheat seems contradictory to the mentality of most runners I know.
But...I know it happens.
This is a great post! I wonder about those people too...even on my training runs, I can cut my course short by a bit and lie about my time, but really who am I cheating but myself? I can't even handle that kind of guilt, much less the guilt that would come from cheating SOMEONE ELSE out of something that they potentially deserved more than myself.
I completely agree with you...to what end indeed!
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