Fitmark Ambassador Dawn Crocetti talks Lance Armstrong’s fall from grace
I’ve been following the Lance Armstrong story for as long as it’s been a story. I saw him in his last Tour de France while vacationing in France in 2010, and I have to admit, it was one of the top 10 moments of my life thus far. I’ve followed his career for the last 7 years at a minimum. After watching the Oprah interview, I was so saddened hearing him talk about how he handled the incident of his son defending him, I found myself shedding tears of disappointment that this man whom I have put on a pedestal has fallen from grace.
That’s the thing about heroes: we arbitrarily choose them, yet they are mere humans, mortals we have chosen to represent those ideals higher than the ones we have yet attained for ourselves.
Why, you might ask, are heroes so important? They give us something to aspire to – something higher, greater, or in the words of our college gymnastics coach in his authentic Australian accent, “straightuh, longuh!” They are something greater than we are. We are moms, dads, sisters, brothers, friends. They are gods: Riding and running and climbing into greatness and into the history books with nary a thought of how the kids will get to soccer practice or who will prepare the family dinner tonight. They represent something greater than the trivialities of our daily lives. They are the things we sometimes, sometimes wish we could be.
This is why Lance’s admission is so painful for me. This is the knowledge that even he couldn’t do it all. It became too much. The ever-growing ball of momentum behind him was too big. It brings forth realization that like me, Lance Armstrong is just a human, with the same feelings of self-doubt and fear that I am too small to change the course of history. Unlike Lance, I have no ball of momentum behind me to mask lies or frailties. His success as an athlete afforded him an immunity from human flaws and errors in the eyes of the public, making it all the more disappointing when his mistakes were revealed to us. Without a hero who is seemingly incapable of failure to aspire to, I have become acutely aware of the vulnerability that comes with being human. I have no media behind which to hide. I am bared to the world with all my flaws that is my husband, children and friends. This is why lance’s admission makes me weep.
Stay fit,
Dawn Crocetti
Fitmark Ambassador 2013
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