My wife, Julee, a singer, takes steroids to boost her performance. Isn’t that the same thing world-class cyclist Lance Armstrong is accused of doing throughout his storied (or is it steroid?) career? A career that included a remarkable recovery from cancer that inspired millions (so inspiring, in fact, he appeared on the cover of Guideposts)? I guess what I’m trying to figure out here is some way to give this guy a break.
By the way, the steroids Julee has used at times are for swollen vocal cords. They are corticosteroids, prednisone usually, to reduce inflammation, and not the anabolic steroids some athletes use to artificially increase strength, stamina, endurance and speed. Still, when Julee gets a shot of prednisone backstage a few hours before she goes on, her voice can blow the roof off. I’m telling you, the stuff works. But you need a medical doctor to treat you and give the injection.
The news reports coming out now about Lance Armstrong and almost all the other 
world-class cyclists of the past 15 years or so claim that doping was so prevalent and regarded so casually that it was hardly considered cheating. “Everybody did it,” claimed one source. “It was the only way to compete.”
The real competition was between the cheaters and the testers, and the ever-changing strategies of the former to elude detection by the latter.
So if everyone was cheating, is it still cheating? Doesn’t universal cheating more or less level the playing field? Do I feel betrayed that I put Armstrong on the cover? His framed cover from March 2001 still enjoys a place of honor in our Guideposts offices. We got so many letters from readers expressing their admiration for Lance, saying that he inspired them to fight back against their own problems.
And yet we are being told he is a fraud, the biggest fraud in a sport of frauds. It is sad. And infuriating.
Armstrong was a great athlete who used banned substances to make himself greater. I suppose I get the part about how everyone was doing it. It appears they were. What I find most troubling though is the lying, the denying, the systematic deceit Armstrong and others orchestrated to hide their cheating, the lying under oath, the lying to millions of fans across the world. A lie they would have told to their graves.
So yes, I do feel cheated by Armstrong being on the cover of Guideposts. They say the cover-up is worse than the crime. That’s true. Lying is always the worst of it. As soon as I finish typing this sentence, I’m taking Lance down.
