Out, Damned Spot

"I dare do all that may become a man; who dares do more is none."
So, how the hell does MacBeth relate to the sports of cycling and triathlon?
Well, as far as I'm concerned, this applies to the modern day athlete, as well as to every human being in every aspect of life as much as it did this would-be king.

While it was penned more than four hundred years before "the clear", before Floyd Landis, Nina Kraft, and Tyler Hamilton all tested positive for doping, let alone before all the baseball players that were named in the Mitchell report were outed, it reminds us that ethics must remain the cornerstone of our ambitions.

I take this quote from MacBeth to mean that in life, it's a matter of an individual daring to do all that they can do in the most honorable and admirable way, to achieve their goals. And so, if a man "dares" to do something excessive and outside the bounds of what is admired and/or what he does is "unbecoming" , for example, cheats, he will be diminished and comes to grief.

Somewhere along the way, some of us get so wrapped up in "the ends" that we begin to justify "the means". I cannot imagine the torment an athlete like Marion Jones or Floyd Landis feels knowing that history will not only remember them as cheaters, but that they will personify all that is wrong in their respective sports in this day and age. These fallen icons spent the better part of their lives training, sacrificing and dreaming of sporting greatness only to have "gone too far" because they ultimately went outside the boundaries of fairness and what was becoming a champion.

It's my hope that athletes take the route of a David Millar, the former World Time Trial Champion who was stripped of that title during the Cofidis affair. When drug enforcement officials entered Miller's home they found empty vials of EPO on his trophy case beside the medal and the rainbow jersey of the world championship. David said they were reminders of his disappointment in himself and of how far he'd fallen to achieve his goals...and how hollow these achievements had become because they were achieved through cheating. Fortunately, for David the "blood" he had on his hands was easier to wash away than Duncan's and he is now one of the strongest proponents of cleaning up cycling and sports, in general.

My faith in human nature and plain old hope lead me to believe that there are more Millars out there and that soon we'll see reformation in the sporting world. It really does only take one to start a revolution.