The Trust Factor

If you have not heard about some chap called Lance in the last 24 hours in some shape or form, then it would be worth visiting an opticians or getting a hearing test. If you don’t want to hear anything about a chap called Lance, then I’ll understand if you press the X button in the top right corner of this page.

If you haven't seen the Lance Armstrong interview, I would suggest watching it. My good lady and I woke at 6am this morning to watch it before work, and it was captivating stuff.

My initial thoughts on the show and him:

Would have loved to have seen Jeremy Paxman or somebody like that interview. David Frost perhaps. Oprah does what Oprah does, but she let him avoid answering questions way too much. It would also have been interesting/better had it remained a yes or no interview the whole way through.

Let's see just how long he keeps his stance of not wanting to implicate others or dish the dirt. Naturally, it is way too late for that, but there are a lot of people who must be petrified right now and rightly so. Maintaining this stance of denial for so long, and being allowed to get away with it, means that some folks at the highest level of sport, possibly law enforcement and government, have let this go.

Interesting position he took on the level of doping at the time. By playing down the level of sophistication as having access to the same as everybody else, and by implying that most cyclists were doing it so it was ‘a level playing field’, he is maintaining his stance and arrogance that he was the best regardless.

I have no idea if he will serve a prison sentence, though I did read that there are statutes of limitation on how he cannot be punished given the timeframes involved – 5 or 8 years depending on what you read. Even so, whatever he has to go through, and there will surely be some suffering, he will come out of this just fine. He'll turn it around, and use it to his advantage somehow whether it is via the media, or giving back to the sport and rebuilding his character somehow.

This article (http://espn.go.com/espn/story/_/id/8852974/lance-armstrong-history-lying) got me randomly thinking about trust. The author trusted Lance. A lot of people did. It is the same in every-day life when people do things they promise not to, or lie, or whatever it may be. Some of the people I have a great deal of admiration and care for have that level of trust – they see the good in people from the outset and trust until that trust is broken. I can only think it is a positive thing that those kind natured people exist in this world. Some would call it naivety. Others have scepticism and a lack of trust until it is earned.

I remember waking up to watch the 1988 Olympics and seeing the scandal of Ben Johnson failing the drugs test. I could not and did not want to believe it. Little Bobby scampered upstairs at some ungodly hour and woke mum and dad up with the news. I could not believe it.

Having worked in sport and betting, and having grown up, I can't paint the happy picture that so many want to believe is true. That the athletes we idolise don't cheat, don't take drugs, don't take payments for losing games. It is more rife than any of us can imagine. A sad reality and not one that anybody can take pleasure from as it threatens to ruin the sports we love and why we love them.

All that this Lance episode will achieve is adding that degree of scepticism in the minds of many. How many others on sport are doping? When you see some of the outstanding performances at a World Cup or an Olympics, how many of those are cheating and it is just not detected?

This whole episode is similar to the Jimmy Savile case. Stick with me on this, I appreciate the comparison is a little random but I’m banking on the fact that Lance 1. doesn’t read my blog and 2. that he won’t be suing anybody else for a while. Perhaps not quite so horrendous as Savile I'll give you that, but another example of how somebody can somehow live a life of such deceit, denial and dishonour, and fool their way through. At least Lance will suffer the consequences, Savile was lucky he died and then it came out. How these lies can be covered up is totally beyond me and it is concerning.

I guess they are covered up because there are people out there who are at fault for allowing it to happen. Unfortunately, it is our trust in people that allows us to be suckered in by people like this. The dreams are nice, but there has always been and always will be, folks like this willing to benefit and profit from building that mythical dream based on lies and deceit.

I think most of us build trust in one of two ways. We either approach everything with scepticism and let people build and earn trust. Or we begin with a level of trust already, and then let it erode or strengthen as the relationships builds. Unfortunately the latter leaves us open to being disappointed, let down and betrayed by events like this. The former is not necessarily the best to approach things, and it arguably may lead to us not building relationships for fear of that betrayal, but it is the defence mechanism inside us which protects us. The best approach is surely to be as open minded as possible, but I fear our tendency is to lean in one of the two directions I mentioned.

With Lance, just as with Jimmy, folks have been suckered in to wanting to believe it was not true, despite all the evidence, and the rumours, suggesting otherwise. I fell for it when I was a young pup with Ben Johnson. I’m not suggesting that treating everything with cynicism is the best route forward. Just as it helps to find the positive in a bad situation, keeping it in mind that idols and dreams may well possess flaws, can do no harm. It may reduce expectations but it decreases the disappointment.