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Unless you've been living under a rock, by now you have heard of Lance Armstrong. The unusual thing here is that you may have heard of him, but not always for the same reason. Some know him as a champion cyclist who set the world record by winning the Tour de France six times. Others may know of him through his philanthropic works, namely The Lance Armstrong Foundation and the yellow Livestrong wristbands that you see everywhere these days. Others may know him as a cancer survivor who decided to meet the challenges that cancer threw his way head on and came out the winner. Regardless of how you know of him, just knowing of him at all offers your life inspiration when you may need it most.
(Millions around the world properly celebrate him and his lofty accomplishment.)
Lance Armstrong’s Heroism Is a Moral Inspiration
By Andrew Bernstein
When Lance Armstrong rode through Paris on Sunday, crowning his unprecedented seventh consecutive victory in the grueling Tour de France, he put an exclamation mark on what is more than merely an extraordinary athletic career.
By this time, the entire world knows Armstrong’s story–his remarkable recovery from what was feared to be terminal cancer, his exhausting training program, his legendary endurance, his dauntless determination, his unequalled dominance of cycling’s premier event. Millions around the world properly celebrate him and his lofty accomplishments.
But what explains the enormous interest in Armstrong’s success–or that of any other sports hero? Why do sports fans set such a strong personal stake in the victories of their heroes? After all, little of any practical significance depends on such victories; a seventh Armstrong win won’t get his fans a raise or help send their children to college. Why do sports have such an enormous, enduring appeal in human life?
The answer lies in a rarely recognized aspect of sports: their moral significance. What athletic victories provide is a rare and crucial moral value: the sight of human achievement.
Athletic competitions are staged with the goal of achieving victory. By their very nature, they seek and honor champions, i.e., those select few who, in a given field, outdistance their brothers and sisters. The result of this policy is that sports reward exceptional achievement, not equality; they glorify the elite, not the ordinary; they celebrate towering heroes, not “the little guy.”
Sports do not seek to “level the playing field” in an attempt to give a less-talented competitor a better chance of defeating a superior rival. Properly, there are no penalties imposed on a champion for being superior to his foes. Lance Armstrong, for example, is not required to heft a twenty pound weight up the steep ascents of the Pyrenees. Michael Jordan was not banned from springing skyward. The PGA does not require Tiger Woods to use an inferior brand of clubs. The only equality permitted is that every competitor gets the same opportunity to showcase his talents and determination.
With artificial handicaps or advantages eliminated, sports provide an undiluted example of the pursuit of excellence. In an era when the anti-hero is dominant in intellectual culture, sports provide the purest arena in which to pursue, observe and appreciate human aspiration, achievement and greatness. The reality of an athlete striving to hone his skills to the utmost–enduring pain, overcoming injury, testing his mettle against the world’s best–provides a noble vision of man’s potential.
Those of us who, physically, cannot cycle 2,000 miles or run the 100 meters in 9 seconds can still aspire to significant achievements. The vision of Armstrong’s magnificent abilities and dauntless determination engenders in the best of us the questions: What might I accomplish in my field and in my life if I embodied the same degree of dedication? How high might I go in my own life-promoting endeavors if I put into them the identical indefatigable qualities of spirit that Armstrong does?
The motto of the Modern Olympic Games is: Citius, Altius, Fortius–Swifter, Higher, Stronger. Lance Armstrong embodies these principles perfectly. A great athlete like Armstr
ong is inspiring, because he reminds us how much is possible to a human being. He is living proof that an individual can reach great attainments and that profuse exertion in pursuit of a daunting goal need not be fruitless.
100 metres in 8 second？
Many contemporary amateur athletes would have broken world records if they had taken part in the first Olympic Games. Since then, records have fallen in track and field year after year as athletic performances have continually improved. If records fall, it is usually due to better equipment, training and diet, but recently, improvements have begun to slow down. At the 2000 Olympic, only three runners achieved Olympic bests with no world records. Some experts predict a ceiling for many events, such as 9.5 seconds. However, past predictions have nearly always been wrong. When we talk about breaking records, we come across the issue of performance-enhancing drugs are originally developed to help people with illnesses, but in the wrong hands, they create supreme athletes making them faster and stronger than is normal for human beings. Taking these drugs is known a
s “doping” and although they enhance performance, they also cause serious health problems in later life for those who abuse them. The sports world does not tolerate doping as it a fundamental form of cheating. Ben Johnson would still be the 100 metres world record（holder） if he had not been caught taking drugs in the 1988 Olympic. Other records remain doubtful, like Florence Griffith’s 100 metres record back in 1988. Did she take drugs? If American athlete Marion Jones hadn’t taken drugs, would she have made it to the Olympics at all? Doping is not only a problem in athletic, it is part of every sport where athletes seek to achieve beyond their natural limits and are prepared to cheat to do so. In 2006 cycling fans worldwide were shocked when the winner of the annual cycling race, the Tour de France, was caught doping. Floyd Landis made several lame excuses blaming medicine he had been taking for an injury but these were all in vain. He failed two drug tests. Unfortunately, it is not easy to catch athletes using illegal drugs. It is compulsory for winners to be tested but other participants are only tested at random. New drugs are developed all the time and drug tests for sporting events are often one step behind. However, doping is not the only thing we need to worry about. Unless we are care
ful, “gene-therapy” will be the next big threat. For medical purposes, scientists have already found ways to build muscle and increase strength by changing people’s genes. Gene-therapy is very controversial and many people oppose further research into it. If genes-therapy were used now, it would be almost impossible to find out. In the future, athletes who have their genes changed might be able to do the 100 meters dash in just 8 seconds or the marathon in less than two hours. However, if a generation of sports stars with enhanced genes were created, it would contradict the whole spirit of sport. The Olympics spirit — the spirit of competition which emphasizes taking part rather than winning — has been violated by the desire to succeed at all costs. In today’s world, winner are celebrated and treated as heroes, but if doping and gene-therapy continue to affect the outcomes of major sporting events, word “hero” will have lost all meaning.

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