The are a couple of exceptions to every rule, and… I will
still state that we are all pretty much the same.
We can all find ourselves caught up in our success; in greed;
in lust (or what we might think at the time is love); or in our arrogance and
end up doing things that under other circumstances we would advise other people
not to do.
My case in point is Bradley Wiggins. He is arguably Britain’s most famous professional
cyclist. He won the Tour de France; he
is an Olympic Gold Medal winner; and he is the current world cycling hour
record holder, among other things!
Apparently he does
not have a friend or mentor who cares enough about him to be brutally honest
with him.
Here is how we can know that…
In short:
professional cycling has very strict rules about what drugs a
participant can and cannot take, both in and out of season. Granted, many people feel that, as in many
sports, doping is rampant in spite of the rigid rules, and that’s another
story.
Some drugs that are normally banned can be taken legally IF
the cyclist gets a TUE, or a Therapeutic Use Exception. Many cyclists have gotten a TUE for something
called Corticoids, a type of steroid often used for allergies. Some claim that this is nothing but legal
doping, and again that’s another story.
Bradley Wiggins, and Team Sky stated loudly and clearly they
were leading the way in ‘Clean Cycling’ and showing that a clean cyclist could
win the Tour De France.
In his autobiography he stated that other than immunizations
when he was young, he had never had an injection. NEVER.
So…his whole career and the whole theme of Team Sky is clean
cycling, no needles, and transparency.
Get it?
Now… the hacker group Fancy Bears gets into the data and
shows the world that Bradley Wiggins had 3 injections, one just before the 2012
Tour De France (which he won). He did
have a TUE, so he had every legal right to take that steroid injection.
HOWEVER… remember that he stated in his autobiography that
he NEVER had ANY injections. So now the
news is out that he did in fact have injections.
What does he do?
What would you do??
What do I hope I would do???
Bradley Wiggins gets on the news, sticks with his story and
denies having sports injections.
EVER! Even though everyone can
see for themselves, right there in black and white, he did indeed get 3 steroid
injections! Huh?
Now I learned when I
was a young man that it’s one thing to do or say something stupid… and something
else completely to then go ahead and try to cover up that mistake. The person who covers up the mistakes ALWAYS
gets in more trouble than the person who did not cover it up. Don’t ask me how
I know that.
We all make lots of mistakes (or if we are not willing to
admit that, we at least know lots of other people who make lots of mistakes)
and we end up paying for most of them in one way or another.
However some of us, for some reason, cannot admit some of
those mistakes, so we deny them and try to cover them up. That is when the word disgraced comes up.
We, people in general, can almost always get over the
mistakes of others.
What we cannot get over is being lied to. We trust the people we care about, our heroes
in particular, to tell us the truth, and when they lie to us we feel
betrayed. We are all vulnerable to
falling into this trap. We all have
egos; they can be pretty fragile, and we can end up lying to keep that ego
intact.
No one who finds him/herself where Bradley Wiggins finds
himself ever thought they would end up there.
We all believe that we would act differently, after all that is how we
justify feeling so hurt. “I would
never…” And yet A LOT of people end up
lying about their mistakes.
So what can we do to prevent this from ever happening to us?
We need to already
have a friend or mentor who cares enough about us to be brutally honest.
That person would either have told me to be honest in my
autobiography, as long as I was not so wrapped up in my ego that I allowed them
to read it before publishing it. I’m in
the clear.
OR
They would have told me to revise my autobiography, admit
that I omitted those injections, and tell the truth. I’m in the clear.
OR
They would have told me to admit my injections and TUE’s as
soon as the data breach was public. I’m
not quite in the clear, and I made a mistake.
For the most part we forgive our hero’s mistakes. Eventually I’ll be in the clear.
If you do not have that kind of friend/mentor AND talk to
them/get their advice regularly… find one OR roll the dice!