It’s obvious, but still fun to say.

Try it.

Point out to a friend that you Tour de France as many times as Lance Armstrong.

Why point this out?

Credibility and reputation count for a lot in business and relationships in general. It seems to me that the credibility and reputations of people who don’t cheat suffer if people who do cheat keep the same quality of credibility and reputation as they do.

I feel compassion for him, but I also recognize he chose to do everything he did. I remain impressed with what he was able to achieve physically, but not impressed with his winning any competitions because I don’t know if he ever competed for anything. He may have, and he may have won some, but most of the time he didn’t — he only acted like and said he did.

Enough times he didn’t compete when he said he did that I doubt anyone would believe him.

What gets me the most is that while he was acting like a competitor, he was taking the place of someone who was going to compete. That others he knew — even if everyone else — was doing the same doesn’t change that he crowded out others. Actually, I read that he actively did push out others who did want to compete, which Armstrong didn’t.

He said at some time he didn’t consider his actions cheating but “leveling the playing field.” It seems to me he leveled the playing field among other people cheating at the expense of people who followed the rules.

I don’t mean just to poke fun at someone who obviously put in great effort and achieved a lot. I don’t know if what he did was good, bad, right, or wrong. I only know he did the opposite of what he said for years and that credibility and reputation are built on that consistency between behavior and communication, or lack thereof.

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