Is it “cheating” if everyone does it?

This question is prompted by my getting a book about Lance Armstrong from the library.  I had read his own autobiographical book so thought this new biography would be an interesting alternative view.  Wow was I wrong!  I found his attitude, as portrayed by this writer, to be so annoying, depressing, mind-boggling, that I have even blocked out the author’s name.  I based my opinion on the prologue where Armstrong is quoted extensively with rather foul language and demeaning comments about women.  So I skipped the book and went to the epilogue just to see if there was any reason presented there that would make me want to actually read the stuff in between.  There wasn’t.

The gist that I came away with was that although he used (and denied using) performance enhancing drugs for years, it wasn’t “cheating” because “everyone else” was doing it, too!  Well, the first question, posed by one of my friends, is how could he be sure that everyone was doing it?  If, in fact, even one person on the Tour de France – or any other competitions in which he participated – was not doing it, then it was cheating.  Actually, it is cheating if it is against the rules as these drugs clearly are.

At this point – i.e., when he granted the interviews to the reporter – he was owning up to having used the drugs, but showed no remorse, as everyone was doing it.  He is more annoyed at having been “caught” or having teammates report that he was using the drugs while denying their use.

But, in truth, the bottom line is that if he really felt that way, why didn’t he own up to it while using them?  If it truly, in his mind, wasn’t cheating, why not admit to it.  So, obviously, even though he claims it’s not cheating, it was something he didn’t feel “comfortable” admitting.  Which means, to me, that he knew it was wrong and that he knew the rest of the world would agree that it was wrong.

What an embarrassing and depressing conclusion to what had appeared to be a stellar career!