Icons In The Moment

1965: "Get up and fight, suckaa!!!"
In a divine cleanse of stars and flashbulbs...

I am not actively a "fan" of boxing. However, while getting a haircut at a local barbershop today, I noticed on the wall across from me, a poster version of the iconic image of Muhammad Ali (Cassius Clay at the time) standing over Sonny Liston. A little further research revealed that it was May 25th, 1965, the WBC Heavyweight Championship. The first minute, of the first round... and Liston is laid out on the canvas, knocked out, while Ali hovers above him as if to say "Yeah punk, you want some MORE of THIS?!?!"

This week's announcement that Lance Armstrong is retiring from the sport of professional bicycle racing (*AGAIN*) brought to mind an image just as iconic in my own mind's eye. It was that of Armstrong winning the 1999 Tour de France's mountain stage at Sestriere.

Like Ali, Armstrong's successful sporting career, often inseparable from his cult of personality, has also had its detractors. And I must readily admit that I have often enough in the last few years uttered less-than-flattering words preceded by the Texan's name (words such as "tool," "jackass," "media-whore," and "doper").

1999: Reaching through the gloom for the light we all reach for...
(or "Yeah, punks, I got YEARS more of THIS!")

Yet, back on that mountain in '99, he was just off his recent bout of cancer, and was stamping his authority on the Tour de France for cycling's best "heads of state" and all the world to see. For me, it was a glorious moment, a mystical moment,... an iconic moment. His *most* iconic.

He had not only apparently beaten cancer and cheated death, but was now through sheer force of will (*hopefully* unaided by pharmaceuticals) now reaffirming what was possible in his life. In all of our lives... And, like the media machine train wreck that would follow, we could not look away.

Who are these men, really? ... These flawed giants of sport that at times transcend the adverse circumstances and bonds of human limits? If we could only ignore the personal life stuff and focus on the athletic stuff ...

I'm reminded of the quote by Robert Louis Stevenson:

"To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life..."

I had to write that like 800 times as punishment in 6th grade, by the way, so may as well put it to good use! The only "end" of life ... Not in the sense of life's "end," or ceasing to exist, but an end as in life's goals and ultimate purpose. Do your best, ... be the best we can be, etc. etc.

Either way, these greats, like most great athletes, know about being in the moment at the highest level. We know it too, don't we? When we're "in the moment"? Think about it.

Whether hookin' and jabbin' or pedaling in anger, they seem to have raged with such demon-fueled fury  in clutch moments (the seeds of that raging planted out of the ring and off the bike) that I would like to think that through their example our aspirations are sanctified and offered up, and we become that much more of who we strive to be (hopefully, in clean athletic competition).

Thus, even when we might have convinced ourselves that we hate them, we love them still. Even when they let us down... as they almost always will.