Supplied - HaseAt the Beijing Olympics in 2008, Canadian shot-putter Dylan Armstrong missed out on a podium position by just a single centimetre. Last week, he was awarded a bronze medal in his hometown of Kamloops, B.C. after third-place finisher Andrei Mikhnevich of Belarus was given a lifetime ban for doping. All of Mikhnevich’s throws dating back to 2005 were erased from the record books and Armstrong took his place as the 2008 Olympic bronze-medallist — but is any of it actually forgotten?
Though my ego as a Canadian living vicariously through our Olympic team is greatly stroked by this, I’m somewhat uneasy about this turn of events. Simply put, there really is no good way to handle doping in sport. The Olympics’ re-awarding system seems to be the best of any sport so far, but it’s still flawed because people are being given medals years after they’re even relevant. An entire generation of ballpark gods — ranging from home run king Barry Bonds to fireballer Rocket Roger Clemens — are locked out of Cooperstown because of their involvement in the steroid era. On top of that, professional cycling is an utter and complete mess.
All seven of Lance Armstrong’s Tour de France victories have been wiped from the records. As far as the cycling world is concerned, those races have no winner. Even if they were to be re-awarded, the powers that be would have to travel below the podium more than once to find a “clean” athlete. Cycling in the 1990s and early millennium was defined by doping so much so that 1996 Tour winner Bjarne Riis went as far to call it a “circumstance of the business” in his biography. It should be noted that Riis is still the “winner” of the 1996 Tour in terms of record books with an asterisk beside his name. Lance Armstrong seems to have been treated with the double standard to end them all, as all trace of his name and achievements have been struck from the record books.
Many sports simply cover it up. Who knows how many athletes are or have been guilty of this apparently blasphemous sin against their sports? Frankly, no more should be. Parading Armstrong in front of Oprah, allowing the public to decry him for remaining competitive in the openly juiced cycling world, and stripping him of every last shred of athletic and moral dignity is utterly disgraceful. The same goes for the Sosas, McGwires, and Bonds of the world; give them their careers back, at least. Whether we like it or not, we stood up and cheered when Big Mark McGwire belted his 70th home run of the season in 1996 and when Lance won his seventh tour.
These athletes are titans of their respective arenas and their achievements should stand in the record books. Eliminating them from the annals of sport serves no purpose but to transfer blame for doping from failures of the leagues and organizations and on to the athletes. A winner is a winner, and redistributing unearned awards after the fact doesn’t change anything.
