A Twisted Crown of Thorns ®

Lance Armstrong is coming to terms with a lot of things. He has decided to come clean on all seven of his Tour de France victories. He has confessed to using performance enhancing drugs, back dated medical certificates and blood transfusions in a televised interview with Oprah Winfrey.
‘I view this situation as one big lie that I repeated a lot of times,’ he said in an televised interview with Oprah Winfrey. This is not a sports blog and I have little interest in writing about Lance. What I am rather intrigued about is to what level and cost people will go to put themselves first. Isn’t that very selfish…but typical of human beings. We are flawed and easily drift to do that which comes as second nature – even if it means taking advantage of others’ naivety.
However once in a while you come across a truly selfless act and it just makes you appreciate the truth, honour and integrity it portrays. We know that all that is good and true comes from God.
Speaking of which here is a good story of another athlete and as always lIttle has been written about this but…

On [December 2, 2012], Basque athlete Iván Fernández Anaya was competing in a cross-country race in Burlada, Navarre. He was running second, some distance behind race leader Abel Mutai – bronze medalist in the 3,000-meter steeplechase at the London Olympics. As they entered the finishing straight, he saw the Kenyan runner – the certain winner of the race – mistakenly pull up about 10 meters before the finish, thinking he had already crossed the line.

Fernández Anaya quickly caught up with him, but instead of exploiting Mutai’s mistake to speed past and claim an unlikely victory, he stayed behind and, using gestures, guided the Kenyan to the line and let him cross first.

Ivan Fernandez Anaya, a Basque runner of 24 years who is considered an athlete with a big future (champion of Spain of 5,000 meters in promise category two years ago) said after the test:
“But even if they had told me that winning would have earned me a place in the Spanish team for the European championships, I wouldn’t have done it either. I also think that I have earned more of a name having done what I did than if I had won. And that is very important, because today, with the way things are in all circles, in soccer, in society, in politics, where it seems anything goes, a gesture of honesty goes down well.”

He said at the beginning: unfortunately, very little has been said of the gesture. And it’s a shame. In my opinion, it would be nice to explain to children, so they do not think that sport is only what they see on TV.

Winning is not all that counts. Some food for thought there!