Spinning the Professional Wheel Turners, Part I

On June 12, the United States Anti-Doping Association (USADA) opened formal action against Lance Armstrong, Johan Bruyneel, Dr. Pedro Celaya, Dr. Luis Garcia del Moral, Pepe Marti, and Dr. Michele Ferrari on charges related to a widespread doping conspiracy within the U.S. Postal Service professional cycling team. The following day, USADA CEO Travis Tygart confirmed the action to the media, with Armstrong issuing a statement on his own website.

Here we shall examine the USADA statement, as well as the Armstrong statement, which deserves particular scrutiny. In a follow-up post we shall examine public comments made by other professional cyclists through both the cycling press and social media.

The USADA Statement

“In response to numerous inquiries regarding the public statements made by Mr. Lance Armstrong, we can confirm that written notice of allegations of anti-doping rule violations was sent yesterday to him and to five (5) additional individuals all formerly associated with the United States Postal Service (USPS) professional cycling team. These individuals include three (3) team doctors and two (2) team officials. This formal notice letter is the first step in the multi-step legal process for alleged sport anti-doping rule violations.

USADA only initiates matters supported by the evidence. We do not choose whether or not we do our job based on outside pressures, intimidation or for any reason other than the evidence. Our duty on behalf of clean athletes and those that value the integrity of sport is to fairly and thoroughly evaluate all the evidence available and when there is credible evidence of doping, take action under the established rules.

As in every USADA case, all named individuals are presumed innocent of the allegations unless and until proven otherwise through the established legal process. If a hearing is ultimately held then it is an independent panel of arbitrators, not USADA that determines whether or not these individuals have committed anti-doping rule violations as alleged.

At this time USADA will not comment on the evidence or have further comment unless or until it is appropriate.”

Analysis

The USADA statement is a straight forward account of the action being taken against Armstrong, and sticks to official language. It is interesting that USADA made any comment at all, as they generally do not. Crucially, the statement closes with a statement that USADA will have no further comment until the issue is resolved or develops significantly.

The Armstrong Statement

“I have been notified that USADA, an organization largely funded by taxpayer dollars but governed only by self-written rules, intends to again dredge up discredited allegations dating back more than 16 years to prevent me from competing as a triathlete and try and strip me of the seven Tour de France victories I earned. These are the very same charges and the same witnesses that the Justice Department chose not to pursue after a two-year investigation. These charges are baseless, motivated by spite and advanced through testimony bought and paid for by promises of anonymity and immunity. Although USADA alleges a wide-ranging conspiracy extended over more than 16 years, I am the only athlete it has chosen to charge. USADA’s malice, its methods, its star-chamber practices, and its decision to punish first and adjudicate later all are at odds with our ideals of fairness and fair play.
I have never doped, and, unlike many of my accusers, I have competed as an endurance athlete for 25 years with no spike in performance, passed more than 500 drug tests and never failed one. That USADA ignores this fundamental distinction and charges me instead of the admitted dopers says far more about USADA, its lack of fairness and this vendetta than it does about my guilt or innocence.”

Analysis

The Armstrong statement is not an exercise in subtlety. The tone of the statement immediately gives away the Armstrong strategy: This is not an attempt to win anyone over, but rather to hold onto supporters. The heavy handed implications, indignant tone, and strong language would not persuade anyone who is on the fence about Armstrong, and therefore seems to be aimed at limiting the loss of ardent supporters.

The assertion that USADA is “funded largely by taxpayer dollars, but governed only by self-written rules” is both irrelevant and ill-advised. It is an irrelevant point because nearly all taxpayer funded organizations are governed by self-written rules. Governments exist precisely so that taxpayers needn’t personally approve every rule of every body funded by tax dollars, and allowing appointed representatives to oversee this process is part of our social contract. USADA, for instance, is not a government body, but is partly funded by a grant from the Office of National Drug Control Policy, and is therefore recognized by the United States Congress for its official role.

The reason that the point is ill-advised has everything to do with timing. While Armstrong and his public relations handlers previously painted the federal investigation against him as a waste of taxpayer dollars, arguably with some success, we are now in the midst of a contentious presidential election. Messages regarding tax dollar spending and the role of government have reached a saturation point, which means Armstrong’s attempt to politicize USADA’s action against him will likely fall on deaf ears.

Armstrong also boldly chooses to call the charges against him “discredited,” and points to the fact that the Justice Department elected not to prosecute him after a 2 year investigation. However, federal prosecutors pointed not to a lack of evidence that Armstrong doped, but rather uncertainty of the odds of conviction on conspiracy and racketeering charges.

Armstrong further alleges that the witnesses are “bought and paid for,” which is an ironic turn of phrase considering the fact that Armstrong himself once “donated” $100,000 to the UCI, professional cycling’s governing body, while still racing. UCI President Pat McQuaid later acknowledged that accepting the donation was a mistake, after the matter came to light in the media. Floyd Landis and others have suggested that the donation may have been a bribe given  in exchange for covering up a positive test that Armstrong was alleged to have returned in 2001.

Armstrong also states that USADA “punish first and adjudicate later,” which is clearly aimed at painting his temporary ban from competition as punitive. The purpose of the temporary ban, of course, is not punitive but to prevent from the chaos that would result from having an athlete compete, only to be banned shortly thereafter, thus creating a problem with results and prize money.

The end of the Armstrong statement is where it becomes most interesting, however, as it shifts from image management to the assertion of outright falsehoods. Armstrong first makes the irrelevant observation that his accusers have not competed as endurance athletes for as long as he has, which is likely not true in all cases. Then he falsely claims to have competed for 25 years without a spike in performance, also claiming to have never failed a drug test. Neither of these statements are true. Aside from the six positive tests that Armstrong’s 1999 Tour de France samples registered after examination by a French laboratory in 2004, there is also the lingering question of the alleged 2001 positive that Landis claims Armstrong told him he’d had “taken care of.”

Armstrong’s closing sentence highlights focal point of his strategy in managing public perception on the issue: “That USADA ignores this fundamental distinction and charges me instead of the admitted dopers says far more about USADA, its lack of fairness and this vendetta than it does about my guilt or innocence.”

In the previous sentence, Armstrong directly claims to have never doped. Here, however, he chooses to reframe the issue as not a matter of whether he did or did not dope, but whether or not he is being fairly pursued by USADA. This sends a mixed messages, and takes the conviction out of his prior statement.

The Armstrong statement is a desperate, confused, ill-advised approach and will only succeed in convincing the athlete’s most ardent supporters.

The Entirely Circumstantial, Utterly Concerning Case of Bradley Wiggins

Team Sky’s Bradley Wiggins has enjoyed his best ever year, with overall wins in Paris-Nice and the Tour de Romandie, as well as a commanding victory in the recent Criterium du Dauphiné. The Briton’s dominant performance in the race’s long time trial turned heads, despite the pursuit palmares that convinced Jonathan Vaughter’s to sign him to his Garmin-Slipstream squad for the 2009 season. The real surprise, however, is his ascendance as a premier stage racer, beginning with a fourth place finish in the 2009 Tour de France. A dramatic weight loss and strong team support, combined with a parcours well-suited to his powerful, diesel style, saw Wiggins reveal himself as a contender. The Briton was the revelation of a race punctuated by skirmishes between a freshly un-retired Lance Armstrong and a pre-doping conviction Alberto Contador.

But Bradley Wiggins seems to have changed in ways that go beyond his abilities on the bike, and one needn’t look too deeply to find unsettling symmetry in the careers of the Briton and his friend from Texas.

1. In With the In Crowd

During the 2009 Tour de France, Bradley Wiggins the pursuit champion became Bradley Wiggins the Tour de France contender. Riding for Jonathan Vaughter’s Garmin-Slipstream team, Wiggins lost a tremendous amount of weight and rode a gutsy race on a course suited to a rider of his qualities. As he was thrust into the limelight as the revelation of the Tour, the formerly outspoken anti-doper suddenly became quite friendly with Lance Armstrong, who was in the midst of his “Comeback 2.0.” Wiggins  became a different man during those three weeks in France, and the fame, wealth, and proximity to the Armstrong myth that came after the race ended has only made this change more pronounced. Since that time, Wiggins has rarely said a word against doping  and those who do it, and has consistently failed to address the issue when it has been posed to him.

In 2009, Wiggins became a millionaire, a national hero, and a far worse anti-doping advocate than he had previously been.

2. A Curious Method

When Lance Armstrong was asked to justify how he suddenly went from barely finishing grand tours to winning them, he cited dramatic weight loss and superior new training methods. Bradley Wiggins has now made precisely these same claims. While there an obvious correlation between decreased mass and increased climbing speeds on the bicycle, it is concerning to hear Wiggins crediting his recent success to both untraditional training methods and a training camp in Tenerife. The former claim is patently absurd, as it assumes that Wiggins is somehow privy to training information that has somehow eluded all other trainers, coaches, sports scientists, and cyclists. However, it is the time that Wiggins has spent at a “remote hotel in Tenerife” that is most concerning.

Dr. Michele Ferrari, the infamous Italian physician once convicted of malpractice for doping professional cyclists, is “known to work with riders in Tenerife,” according to an article by Stephen Farrand. This information is, of course, hardly news to anyone who has followed the Armstrong case closely throughout the years.

3. Triumph of the Market, Failure of the Press 

Throughout Lance Armstrong’s reign as Tour de France “champion,” the media consistently failed to critically examine the issue of doping allegations against him. The mainstream press hailed Armstrong as an American hero, while the cycling press was too caught up in the sudden attention, and the money that came  along with it. Teams wanted sponsors, writers wanted jobs, editors and publishers wanted to sell newspapers, and precious few minded much if the truth had to be sacrificed for it. The focus shifted to the growth of the sport, and the opening up of new markets was praised in heavily coded language about bringing cycling to the people.

Now Bradley Wiggins carries the weight of his own nation on his shoulders, and his status as a Tour de France contender has made him a national ambassador for his sport. Much like Armstrong and those who surrounded him, Wiggins and Sky have placed great emphasis on growing the sport of cycling in their nation. In reality, growing the sport means growing the market, and while cycling is worth promoting as a potential solution to problems such as obesity, it is ultimately about increasing sales for sponsors. The status of national icon also has the curious effect of discouraging any serious scrutiny of just how the hero accomplishes such amazing feats.

The press should be asking Wiggins serious questions about his time in Tenerife, about his former association with people like Brian Holm, who helped a doped Bjarne Riis to Tour de France victory. The press should be asking Wiggins why he supports Lance Armstrong, who is clearly no ambassador for clean sport. They should ask him why he no longer rails against dopers, but instead calls for caution in accusing people implicated by mountains of circumstantial evidence. Specifically, journalists should be asking Wiggins if he has taken performance enhancing drugs, and if he declines to answer then it should be noted that he declined to comment. To not address the issue at all, however, is absolutely insulting to the profession.

Bradley Wiggins is performing extraordinary feats on the bicycle, and they deserve extraordinary scrutiny. It is not a journalist’s place to decide which questions are appropriate to ask, rather it is their job to ask  questions about the issues that deserve to be addressed.

Seller’s Remorse

As I begin to transition out of my role as editor-in-chief of Portland State University’s student-run newspaper, I’m confronted with a number of conflicts for the first time. One of these conflicts arises from the fact that I’ll likely be spending my summer as an intern for Oregon Public Broadcasting.

So what’s to be conflicted about, you ask?

As the job market for storytellers (copywriters, reporters, photographers, etc.) continues to shrink, more and more recent university graduates have resorted to working for free in the hope of gaining experience and making valuable connections. And while my internship will be a legitimate experience gaining endeavor, for college credit, the market is so full of amateurs willing to work for free that it is increasingly difficult for professionals to find work. As someone on the path toward a career in journalism, I can’t help but wonder whether or not one more person would be paid to work at OPB if there weren’t a steady supply of interns working for free.

The fact that I’ll be involved in public broadcasting comforts me, as I’ll gain important experience in news reporting of the highest standards, without worry of being exploited as free labor. As a reporter, I don’t relish selling myself or my skill set, and earning the approval of industry peers at OPB will mean that I can do less talking on my own behalf when it comes time to present myself to potential employers. My bout with seller’s remorse has, however, led me to promise myself that once I return to graduate after my year studying abroad in Japan, I’ll never work for free again. For myself and for my colleagues, I’ll let professionalism come before the profession.

Lance Armstrong As Bernie Madoff

Professional cycling is arguably in the midst of its cleanest period since the late 1990′s. There are few drug scandals, and a younger generation of riders have proclaimed that their time has come. It is, by all appearances, a golden age for drug-free profesional cycling. There is, however, a general refusal to openly condemn the managers, directors, teammates, and sponsors that nurtured the very system that many are so happy to relegate to the history books. Industry professionals–from racers, managers, and directors to journalists, P.R. hacks and sponsors–have been all too pleased to collectively edit and quickly shelve the accepted version of professional cycling’s recent history.

As the Lance Armstrong investigation fades from memory, one truth has become painfully clear: Lance Armstrong was not the problem.

Lance Armstrong was an asshole, a cheat and a fraud, but he was not the problem with professional cycling anymore than Bernie Madoff was the problem with neoliberal capitalist fundamentalism. Each man became a scoundrel merely by operating most efficiently within the system in which they dwelled. Just as Bernie Madoff followed neoliberal capitalism to its logical conclusion, so too did Lance Armstrong take systematic, organized doping to a level nearly comic in its grotesque monstrosity.

Lance Armstrong should answer for his crimes and be stripped of every trophy that he ever won, but that’s just the beginning of what must happen to save the professional peloton. In recent years, fear of sponsor disinvestment in the sport was a constant talking point for managers, media and professional racers. Unfortunately, the economic downturn that professional cycling so richly deserved did not hit quite as hard as expected. Teams folded and people lost their jobs, but I am certain of one thing: Not a single person who lost their job who did not have, at some point, tacit involvement in the illegal doping of athletes.

This, I’m certain, is a controversial point and so I’ll make myself quite clear. It is my feeling that the people working for teams like Milram and High Road had been around. Perhaps not all of them had injected themselves or others with illegal doping products, but I am certain that they all knew the score and the game that they were playing, and for this reason I am not sorry that they lost their livelihood. It is better for them and for all of us that they were forced to move on from this kind of business.

It may very well be the dawning of a new day in professional cycling, but it would be completely irresponsible to put the recent history on the shelf and it would be scandalous to keep pretending that the sponsors are not involved in what goes on. Lance Armstrong was not the problem and it would be hubris to pretend that doping is something that only merits discussion when it is forced upon us. It is not a topic for the PR hacks and team managers. If a new day has really arrived, doping should be something that fans and journalists continue to put on the table, because that’s the only way that racers, sponsors and managers are going to be willing to discuss it.

Struggling Toward the Freudian Slip

As a third year student of university level intensive Japanese language study, I’ve reached a few memorable and encouraging milestones; I have had dreams in Japanese. I generally understand Japanese jokes at the same time that native speakers do, no longer suffering the humiliation of being the gaijin laughing out of time with the group. I can watch a Takeshi Kitano film without subtitles. I can even, on occasion, hold relatively intelligent conversations with my instructors. There is, however, a new humiliation that I seek.

The active, deliberate communication of the non-native speaker leaves no room for that most delicious of social faux-pas, the Freudian slip. In my seemingly endless slog toward fluency, I’ve decided that it is not the level 1 JLPT exam that will be my guiding inspiration, but the ability to give my subconscious away through casual inattention. As it stands, I can communicate well, but the focus required keeps me actively engaged with my conscious mind. This is not to say that I lack the ability to embarrass myself in Japanese, for that is easy enough. This is accomplished, however, through simple misuse; saying something other than what I intended by virtue of ignorance, poor intonation or contextual misunderstanding. The classic Freudian slip requires that I say what I think, but which I intended to hold back.

In September I will leave for Tokyo, Japan, where I will spend one year studying abroad at Waseda University. I’m thrilled at the prospect of studying at Murakami Haruki’s alma mater, intensifying my language usage, immersing myself in Japan’s rich media culture, and perhaps slumming it in Kabukicho on occasion. New friends, new colleagues, new scholarship, and new experiences all await me in the world’s most densely populated metropolitan area, Tokyo. And if I’m lucky, one of those new experiences will be the slip-up that I accidentally share.

Comfort Food

A few days ago I had a curious and intense craving for liver and onions. On the first day I ignored it, but when it proved not to be a passing hunger, I gave in and went to the market to purchase calf liver and one large onion.

I eat liver approximately once every 2 years and have not ingested it steadily since childhood, when my grandfather would prepare it once or twice each month at the family home. It was always a curiosity, never something I especially liked or disliked.

As I prepared the odorous meal, I joked with my roommate and his girlfriend; was liver popular in Japan, where she is from? Perhaps I’m iron deficient, and my body is seeking to restore its balance, I told them. Perhaps I’m just getting old. After all, liver and onions is old man food, popularized during America’s Great Depression, when it was just about the cheapest cut of meat one could get.

I continued to talk as the liver sizzled in the pan, telling my roommate and his girlfriend all about the many portions of liver and onions shared with my grandfather, and how yes, I did indeed have odd tastes as a child.

The meal was delicious and comforting in a way that sometimes only food can manage, but the next day I continued to wonder at why this craving had emerged, seemingly from nowhere, after years of dormancy. The answer, it turned out, had been elusive only because it was so utterly obvious. Less than a week before my craving for liver and onions, in the midst of very stressful final exams, my grandfather had been diagnosed with cancer. I received updates from my family throughout the week, but because of final exams, work and a profound lack of sleep, I hadn’t really been able to process most of it.

Unable to process the feelings I had about my grandfather’s illness, it appears that I chose to digest them instead.

Media Responsibility in Framing Gender, Race & Difference

Three Men Walk Into a Chat Room

Three white males have just finished a discussion about professional sports, past experience, technology and what it means to build an audience. Two of these men are hosts of a talk show, one is their guest. As the first guest signs off, the next arrives, to much fanfare; he is an enigma, a black man celebrated for his status in a field dominated by white men. He is treated as somewhat of a curiosity, but is shown every hospitality and the respect due to his stature.

Before the conclusion of the segment, however, a second black man is paraded in. He is also a curiosity in the field, and is verbally poked and prodded in much the same fashion as the first, though now with less sensitivity, perhaps.

This talk show segment has gone from what may reasonably be perceived as an interview to a spectacle of difference. The subjects are celebrated for their novelty value; the hosts clearly do not know how to approach them in an adult manner, so they don’t.

Tour Chats

A scenario similar to this played out on Neil Browne’s Tour Chats, when an interview that was clearly intended to celebrate the internet character that is @mmmakio devolved into a panel that could rightly have been called “Asian Girls of Cycling” after @mplsminx showed up. The hosts seemed excited to have her, but once they did, they clearly had no idea what to do or say. Predictably, the hosts and the participating audience fell back on cherished cliche’s and double entendres.

All in Good Fun

So what is the problem with this if it’s all in good fun? The problem is that professional cycling, like much of the media landscape, is dominated by white males. It is a problem if the same people who openly criticize promoters for unequal pay in women’s racing use their privileged place in the media to unknowingly frame something that they are uncomfortable with (gender, race, difference) as a curiosity.

Karl Marx defined ideology with his famous quote “they don’t know it, but they are doing it,” and that is precisely what is happening here. No one is trying to marginalize women or asians as being different, but we are. When we ask women stupid, shallow questions and fall back on sexual innuendo when we don’t know what else to say, we reinforce that hegemony.

Something to Gain, Something to Lose

I’ve noticed a marked change in the electronically connected cycling fans that show up in my twitter feed. So-called “Snark” is all the rage, perhaps understandably so, since a sincere approach to cycling commentary or fandom will almost certainly end in failure. Relentless irony combined with the desire to promote one’s point of view, one’s blog, one’s self, have left a once contentious community hobbled and reluctant to say anything approaching the level of honesty that was present when the anti-doping movement was at its peak.

The pro cycling peanut gallery now suffers from the same condition as those in the professional peloton; they have a stake. It shows in everything, even that familiar point of view. They don’t know they’re doing it, but I can see it.

Dumb & Dumber

According to Outside Magazine, Tyler Hamilton was confronted by Lance Armstrong this past weekend at an Aspen restaurant. This is significant as Tyler Hamilton has recently testified against his former US Postal Service team leader in a federal criminal proceeding.

It appears that Armstrong has yet to learn his lesson, but while he was able to bully rivals in the peloton with impunity, the real world is quite a different place. More importantly, the world is an increasingly different place for Armstrong, whose problems are no longer measured solely in the metrics of public opinion, but also in legal statutes.

While it is unlikely that Armstrong will be prosecuted for the confrontation anywhere other than the court of public opinion, one wonders if the cyclist’s lawyers are concerned about the following section of the federal code:

United States Code: Title 18, Part I, Chapter 73, Section 1512: Tampering with a victim, witness or informant.

(d) Whoever intentionally harasses another person and thereby hinders, delays, prevents, or dissuades any person from—

(1) attending or testifying in an official proceeding;

(2) reporting to a law enforcement officer or judge of the United States the commission or possible commission of a Federal offense or a violation of conditions of probation ^[1] supervised release,,^[1] parole, or release pending judicial proceedings;

(3) arresting or seeking the arrest of another person in connection with a Federal offense; or

(4) causing a criminal prosecution, or a parole or probation revocation proceeding, to be sought or instituted, or assisting in such prosecution or proceeding;

or attempts to do so, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 3 years, or both.

The Problem Professional Cycling Does Not Have

The one problem that sponsors, team owners, managers & riders all agree exists in professional cycling is a fallacy: The sport does not suffer from an image problem, it suffers from a drug problem.

Team managers, in particular, seem overly fond of referring to the sport’s image problem when speaking to the media about doping issues. Europcar Team Director Jean Rene Bernaudeau recently told Velonation.com that he hopes the Court of Arbitration for Sport find in favor of Alberto Contador in his clenbuterol case, otherwise the “image of cycling is going to suffer.”

Clearly something is amiss when the owner of a reputedly clean team is concerned with the image of the sport rather than the facts of a doping case against a former Tour de France winner. Where then does this imagined image problem come from?

The Parallax View

A parallax describes the condition of an object that appears to change in manifest shape or direction, when in reality it is the position of the observer that has changed. The same is true of ontological concepts, as explored by philosophers such as Hegel and Slavoj Zizek, who used the concept of a parallax view to explain the difference between the symbolic & the real.

Zizek suggests that the symbolic & the real are mutually exclusive, that a person can either be an ethical being (the symbolic) or the result of determined biology (the real), but never both. The space between these two possibilities represent an ontological blind spot, a parallax of sorts.

Far outside of such abstract notions, I would suggest that professional cycling has experienced a very real parallax of it’s own.

The Symbolic Bicycle Racer

Roland Barthes once proposed his sense of the myth of the Tour de France, and the importance of the symbolic nature of the bicycle racer:

“The stake of the combat,” Barthes wrote. “is not to know who will defeat the other, who will destroy the other, but who will best subjugate that third common enemy: nature…The severest ordeal that nature imposes on the racer is the mountain. The mountain: weight. Now to conquer the slopes and the weight of things is to allow that man can possess the entire physical universe. But this conquest is so arduous that moral man must commit himself to it altogether; that is why the mountain stages are the key to the Tour: not only because they determine the winner, but because they openly manifest the nature of the stake, the meaning of the combat, the virtues of the combatant…It is not muscle that wins. What wins is a certain idea of man and of the world, of man in the world. This idea is that man is fully defined by his action, and man’s action is not to dominate other men, it is to dominate things.”

The Real Bicycle Racer

While doping has always been a part of the Tour de France, two factors have forever changed the sport from being largely symbolic to all too real: The rise of global capitalism and the advance of medical technology.

The former has created the need for a more reliable means of winning, while the latter has provided teams with the means of providing sponsors with the financial security they demand. Champion cyclists can now be created by committee, medical technology providing the means to biologically perfect ‘the real.’

Turmoil Within, Turmoil Without

For the public, this battle has become internalized. One no longer sees the symbolic battle between the Tour de France racer and the world around him, but instead wonders at the battle within him; Has this man given in to the world of drugs, or does he race on bread & water alone?

In terms of the real, fans no longer look to a champion’s teammates in assessing his chances, but rather to his staff. Who is his doctor? What is the ethical record of his team manager? Where does he train, and with whom has he been training?

The space between the symbolic and the real, what Zizek would call the parallax view of professional cycling, contains the ontological area that should be of grave concern for anyone who cares deeply about the soul of the sport. It is this philosophical blind spot that contains the truth.

As for the present reality of the sport of professional cycling, there has been a very identifiable shift, and I am no longer speaking of the symbolic and the real. Factually speaking, the sport’s so called image problem represents a shift, not in reality, but in perspective.

The reality of professional cycling has remained constant since the introduction of EPO into the peloton, for whether 95% or 5% of the peloton are doped is inconsequential when the perception of the common fan is that there is no material truth to be known, but rather a subjective notion of faith in some small corner of the cycling world. If the reality of professional cycling has remained unchanged since the 1990′s we must, therefore, assume that it is merely our perspective that has changed.

The symbolic vantage point that we could never fully comprehend has given way to a reality that we can but barely endure. The world has seen behind the curtain, and there is no going back. Our fiction so completely informs the reality of daily life that no amount of science or testing can ever return cycling to what it once was. A new path must be forged, for while the truth may have saved professional cycling in 1999, the present situation requires something more.

There is a great change coming, and as with all change, times of great turmoil and uncertainty.

“Betrayed! Betrayed!” Kafka wrote in The Country Doctor. “A false alarm on the night bell once answered-it cannot be made good, not ever.”

2012: Symbolism & Irony in the End Times

Armageddon as a Team Sport

Marxist-Lacanian philosopher Slavoj Zizek has written extensively on the ways in which cinema expresses our deepest ideologies, those which otherwise lay buried in our collective subconscious. One hallmark of this behavior, he argues, is the function of the disaster film as our unconscious recognition of the impending collapse of global capitalism. Of the Roland Emmerich disaster film 2012, Zizek said the following:

“It perfectly embodies the typical liberal hypocrisy. It’s really a movie about how 99% of the people should die so that a stupid American family gets together. The lesson of catastrophe movies is usually to create, through this external threat, a big human solidarity. The lesson is very sad: That in order to reach solidarity today, we must, almost all of us, perish.”

This examination lends a useful model through which to appreciate the vast destruction that professional cycling has suffered toward the goal of solidarity in the anti-doping movement. Many have perished, many more will & still we are divided.

The Transfiguration of Bernie & Lance

Capitalism has fallen on hard times, but Zizek is quick to point out that it is due a flaw in the system, rather than individual failures in morality. While making it clear that he finds Bernie Madoff to be a “disgusting creep”, the Slovenian philosopher finds him to be guilty only of mastering the capitalist system too well.

“This cheap moralization of the (global financial) crisis,” Zizek has said. “as though it’s not the system, but (Bernie) Madoff. I almost felt a certain sympathy for him, he was for me, the ideal postmodern capitalist. At the same time you ruthlessly speculate to the limit, half of your profits you give to different foundations…starving children in Africa, whatever. He, for me, is not a freak: He is, for me, just a little bit too pure an embodiment of what the system pushes you to be.”

In the world of professional cycling, no height is greater than victory in the Tour de France. In repeatedly conquering the Tour de France, Lance Armstrong seemed to become the ideal professional cyclist. In relentlessly profiting from this ideal, he came to represent global capitalism in its most pure form. From illness to wellness, failure to victory & poverty to wealth: Lance Armstrong transformed himself from a man to a brand, and like Madoff, his transfiguration ends as a cultural symbol of purist ideology driven to the brink.

The Semiotics of Downfall

The irony of the cinematic portrait of 2012 as a metaphor for the impending collapse of global capitalism may become doubled if Lance Armstrong’s trial commences in the coming year. Semiotics use the structure of Signifier, Signified & Sign to interpret myth & meaning in media texts.

If Lance Armstrong is the signifier, and his corruption & downfall are the signification, how will the world come to interpret the sign?