Sally Jenkins on Lance

Sally Jenkins, the co-author of Lance Armstrong’s biography, entertained online questions today for The Washington Post. A questioner from New York City offered the opinion that Lance was an American, a champion, and an insufferable jerk. Sally’s answer was interesting and worth repeating.

“All champions have an insufferable jerk in them. The qualities that enable him to descend a mountainside at 75 mph, or to climb Alps on a bike that car transmissions have a hard time pulling up, are not the qualities that are always great at the dinner table. Champions are curt, focused, self-absorbed, and single-minded. If you encounter Armstrong in the midst of the Tour, he’s not the warmest guy in the world. But if you meet him in September when he is wearing flip flops and drinking a beer, he’s utterly charming. He’s become a good friend of mine as well as co-author, so I am obviously biased. But I’ve had a decade to decide whether he’s a jerk underneath it all, and, to me, he isn’t. He does more work than any athlete I’ve ever known for other people. His work for cancer patients is a hundred percent genuine, and the leading motivator of his life.”

As Sally Jenkins said, she knows Lance well. They’re friends and have co-written two books together. The guy from New York is an outsider looking in (as are most of us). I noticed that a number of other questioners had equally distorted views of Armstrong. But it’s not surprising. This is what we do with celebrities. They assume the role of archetypes in our minds, and we load our emotional baggage on them. The press feeds these distortions, and we defend our stereotypes with all the vehemence of rabble-rousers.

I may be naive, but I trust Sally’s opinion on this one. I choose to believe that although Lance Armstrong is a driven athlete (more driven than is humanly possible for most of us), he is still a good person and a good man.