The Baytown Sun (Baytown, Tex.), Vol. 93, No. 16, Ed. 1 Tuesday, January 22, 2013 Page: 4 of 8
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4 The Baytown Sun
Viewpoints
Still unclear on
Armstrong confession
Tuesday
January 22, 2013
UNITV: Round Two
Up front, I have to say
I’m a fan of Lance Arm-
strong. I’ve been a fan since
I first heard his name men-
tioned as the next Ameri-
can hopeful in the Tour de
France.
I
first
start-
ed
tak-
ing
note
of
the
Tour
. de
France in
1986.
It
was
a
year
after
I
Del
Rio
ADAM
YANELLI
High School and my col-
lege roommate, Mario
Vela, with whom I still
talk sports almost every
day, told me how excited
we should be about Greg'
LeMond, who had just be-
come the first American to
win the world’s most pres-
tigious bicycle race.
i intentionally used the
term “taking. notice” in
reference to the Tour de
France.
As an admitted sports
fanatic, l follow closely
the "Big Three,” football,
baseball and basketball,
and have favorite teams
in each. I also follow the
fourth major sport, hockey
(glad they’re back playing
after labor issues forced a
work stoppage), golf on
the PGA Tour and LPGA
(okay, okay, and the Senior
PGA Tour and the Buy.
com tour, European PGA),
the four majors in men’s
and women’s tennis and
college sports.
Then, there are the
sports like NASCAR rac-
ing (post Dale Earnhardt’s
death), the World Cup, the
Olympics and the Tour that
1 take note of. I have nev-
er watched a road bicycle
race other than the Tour de
France, and then often only
the highlights on ESPN.
But I’m aware of certain
aspects of the event, like
there is a race every year;
that it is held in multiple
stages and the actual lay-
out can change from year
to year; that while there
is an individual winner to
each race, the individuals
are part of teams; and that
as a sport, it has long been
linked with blood doping
and other forms of cheat-
ing.
"Everybody in cycling
does it,” those who cover
the sport on a professional
basis have said.
So, I guess there was
always a part of me that
felt that even though
Armstrong was the most
tested athlete ever and
had never failed a drug
test, I wouldn’t be sur-
prised if it came out that
lie wasn’t clean. I mean,
when everybody’s using
and a guy wins seven in
a row, he’s still the best.
My buddy Mario shares a
perspective on-juicing in
sports and shared it with
me when baseball was go-
ing through its process of
cleaning house.
“I want to see 500-foot
home runs! I want to see
guys hit 75 home runs a
year! I want to see games
with 13-11 scores instead
of 2-1,” he said.
And, well, it is enter-
tainment. 1 always say that
sports were the first reali-
ty TV shows, especially
in this day and age when
the media spends as much
time covering athletes’
personal lives. And in this
MTV generation, there are
people that agree with my
friend’s point of view.
I’ve tended to be more
of a purist and agree with
the professional and sanc-
tioned amateur sports hav-
ing rules against chemicals
and maintaining testing
authority over its partici-
pants.
But. when an athlete I
root for or have rooted
for in the past tests pos-
itive or is in the news for
the wrong reasons, 1 don’t
immediately throw them to
the curb.
1 guess I’ve always kept
what the athletes I follow
do on the field separate
from what they do off the
field and don’t expect them
to be role models.
So where do I stand
on Armstrong? It pained
me to look up the list of
winners from the Tour de
France, which began in
1903, and see seven years
with no winner listed; in-
stead the term, “vacated.”
I began following Arm-
strong because he was an
American excelling athlet-
ically on the world’s stage.
Then, I admired him when
he was diagnosed with and
overcame cancer.
But my thoughts about
him reached a new level
when I was diagnosed with
cancer. Now he was like
me; we were in the same
fraternity.
Through his foundation,
he raised millions and mil-
lions of dollars for cancer
research.
Many will say he raised
it through false pretenses.
But if Lance Armstrong
was on his bike at the start-
ing line of the next Tour de
France, I would check to
see what place he was in
after every stage each day,
and I would still root for
him to win.
Adam Yanelli is the
managing editor for The
Baytown Sun. He can
viewpoints@,baytownsun.
com, Attention: Adam Ya-
nelli.
TODAY IN HISTORY
Today is the 22nd day of 2013 and the 33rd day of win-
ter.
TODAY’S HISTORY: In 1901, Britain’s Queen Vic-
toria died at age 81, after a record 63-year reign.
In 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its landmark
ruling on abortion in the Roe v. Wade case.
In 1997, Madeleine Albright was confirmed as the first
female U.S. secretary of state.
In 1998, “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski pleaded guilty
in Sacramento, Calif., and was sentenced to life without
parole.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS: Francis Bacon (1561-1626),
philosopher/essayist; Lord Byron (1788-1824), poet; Au-
gust Strindberg (1849-1912), playwright; D.W. Griffith
(1875-1948), film director; George Balanchine (1904-
1983), choreographer; Piper Laurie (1932- ), actress;
Steve Perry (1949-), singer; Jim Jarmusch (1953-), film-
maker;.Linda Blair (1959-), actress; Diane Lane (1965-),
actress; Ubaldo Jimenez (1984-), baseball player.
TODAY’S FACT: The tradition of performing
Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker” during the holiday sea-
son began with George Balanchine and the New York
City Ballet in 1954.
GREATEST.
SUPER OWL
RIVALRY
EVER
SUPER BOWL
WM
ssskker*.
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Remembering Coach
Bill Thompson
The world lost a great man last
week.
I met Bill Thompson as a seventh
grader at Horace Mann in 1963. 1
didn’t play football that year, but
he came by my science class in
the spring recruiting for the eighth
grade team.
He was the most demanding
coach I ever had.
He taught us how to work through
bumps and bruises and made us
better players. He instilled a strong
work ethic, which he taught by ex-
ample.
During blocking practice if
somebody wasn’t doing it right,
he would ask ‘who wears 7-1/8?’
Then he would put the helmet on
and get down in the mud with us
and show how it’s done. As an
eighth and ninth grader at Horace
Mann, I didn’t realize what I was
learning.
The year 1 graduated from junior
high. Sterling was opened. I thought
I was finally free from ‘Wild Bill,’
but when 1 got to Lee/there he
was! We joked about that years lat-
er. After I got to high school, my
opinion of him changed.
I began to see him as the dedi-
cated professional that he was. He
didn’t ask any more of us than he
would do himself. Many times he
would run wind sprints with us and
he continued to lead by example.
After graduation and through
my years in the Corps and sports
at A&M and then through some
rather intense training and service
in the Navy, those lessons I learned
from Coach Thompson about fo-
cus and tenacity and determination
began to pay off. 1 remember his
quips; “Quitters never win and win-
ners never quit" and if you slowed
down because you were tired he
would ask “Is the bone showing?"
Those quips kept me going when 1
really didn't feel like it. I give him
an awful lot of credit for getting me
to where I am now. We thought what
he was teaching us was football, but
it wasn’t. The lessons he was teach-
ing were much more important.
Coach Thompson had' more in-
fluence on my life than anybody I
ever knew outside my own family.
Everybody should have a Coach
Thompson; the world would be a
better place.
Chuck Chandler
Cove
Religious freedom? Whatever!
A former British airlines work-
er was just told by a European hu-
man-rights court that she does, in
fact, have the right to wear a crucifix
on her neck. That such a thing would
even have to go to court seems quite
the sign of the times.
It comes as Brits are faced with
same-sex-marriage legislation
that, if passed, would likely leave
churches facing lawsuits when some
clerics inevitably refuse to carry out
such weddings.
The decision came down on
“Religious Freedom Day” here in
America.
“Foremost among the rights
Americans hold( sacred is the free-
dom to worship as we choose,”
proclaimed the White House. This,
from the same White House that
has been arguing in court that em-
ployers must violate their religious
principles when providing insur-
ance for their workers. This is the
same White House that still offers
no recourse for church-run schools
and other faith-based social-service
entities that object to the abortion/
contraception health-insurance
mandate.
Such a narrow understanding
(and “understanding” is a kind way
of putting it) of religious freedom
ought to give us pause - because it’s
not an anomaly. It’s bom out of con-
ventional misunderstandings of core
concepts, including freedom itself,
but also equality and tolerance.
“There is no doubt that religious
liberty is under serious threat in
Britain, particularly for Christians,”
says Paul Coleman, a lawyer with
Alliance Defending Freedom, which
KATHRYN
LOPEZ
was involved with
cases before the
European hu-
man-rights court.
“In the lan-
guage of ‘equali-
ty,’ ‘diversity’ and
‘tolerance,’ secu-
larists have found
a way to sideline
and marginal-
ize Christianity,
successfully framing the moral be-
liefs of Christians as ‘intolerant’ or
‘discriminatory’ and unworthy of
protection. Unless a true balance is
found/where Christians can be ac-
commodated in the public square
and not shut out, we will see many
more cases like the four before the
ECHR in the headlines.”
Three of four recent cases before
the European court back up Cole-
man’s words. A registrar was told
that she didn’t have the right to re-
fuse to perform same-sex civil union
ceremonies, and a counselor was
told that he didn’t have the right to
opt out of working with a same-sex
couple on their sexual problems.
Two dissenting judges voiced that
in the case of the registrar, she de-
served to keep her job because no
one was turned away on account of
her exercise of conscience --there
were others there who could do the
job. But the constriction of thought
infects even the dissenters. The reg-
istrar’s claim is a light one, they
contend, because she is not operat-
ing in a clearly religious context. If
a priest were the one refusing, the
objection would be a much clearer
case, they offered.
The situation in the U.K. could
and should be a cautionary tale for
us.
“Religious freedom in Britain
is in an extremely weak position,"
Paul Diamond, one of the lawyers
involved in the cases mentioned.
He attributes the situation to “a
combination of aggressive secular-
ism ... and significant demographic
changes." Despite the high Christian
pomp of the recent royal wedding,
the British are immersed in a “pro-
gressive” campaign toward pushing
Judeo-Christian values from the
public square, he emphasizes.
Diamond’s “wakeup call" was a
2001 case he was "personally hor-
rified” by, in which an elderly street
preacher with a placard that read
“Jesus Gives Peace, Jesus is Alive,
Stop Immorality, Stop Homosexual-
ity, Stop Lesbianism, Jesus is Lord”
was attacked by a crowd and sub-
sequently arrested and fined for in-
citement. This is not what civilized
people do.
These misunderstandings of
words and ideas are not new, but
we slouch closer toward tyranny
with each one - especially as they
become more official and coercive.
Diamond is hopeful for Americans,
citing our “robust” commitment to
that which has made us exceptional.
This last election indicates there are
miles to go if we are going to meet
his admiring expectations.
Kathryn Lopez is the edi-
tor-at-large of National Review On-
line www.nationalreview.com. She
can be contacted at klopez@nation-
alreview.com.
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Yanelli, Adam. The Baytown Sun (Baytown, Tex.), Vol. 93, No. 16, Ed. 1 Tuesday, January 22, 2013, newspaper, January 22, 2013; Baytown, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1066285/m1/4/: accessed June 21, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Sterling Municipal Library.