The Dirtiest, The Hardest, The Best

The whole rotten edifice of Lance Armstrong’s dream world comes crashing down and I’m so busy fangirling over Bernard Tomic I barely have time to enjoy the full reveal of the cold, calculated glory of Armstrong’s sociopathic nature. What can I say. It’s a rich life. It’s also one full of extremely flawed men. Some of them are the greatest sportspeople of our age; the rest of them are my ex-boyfriends.

I love Tomic and I kind of like Lance Armstrong too, or at least I did until yesterday. The more strident his lies the more I liked him. The chilling demeanour, the callous disregard for others, the brutal denials, the cancerous balls, calling that female accuser a fat prostitute… I also recognised the ‘if something’s worth doing it’s worth doing right’ ethos inherent in his diabolical master-plan – my favourite ethos, as it were.  

Jonathan Horn in The Age criticised the people who have come after Armstrong wielding flame-throwers:

“All sense of proportion has been lost. Lance Armstrong isn’t Jimmy Savile. He isn’t the subject of a royal commission. In an ethically bereft sport, he was the dirtiest, the hardest and the best.”

Goddamn right.  He doped hard he rode hard and he lied hard.

It’s been real.