No Gods and Precious Few Heroes

No Gods and Precious Few Heroes is just about the best history book title I know. It is actually about 20th century Scottish history, but that's not important right now, as it is the title that matters. It was the title that came into my head when I first read the doping revelations surrounding Lance Armstrong. I, like most I suppose, like a good hero. It must come from our love of the heroic characters in literature - but we want them for real. Lance Armstrong was definitely someone I had put on a pedestal. I have followed his career with a sense of awe for many years; that moment in the Alps when he destroyed the German pretender to his TdF throne Jan Ullrich was, for me, one of the great episodes in modern sport. His book, About the Bike, merely confirmed his status in my eyes. However, it turns out to have been a sham. All drug induced and based upon cheating and bullying others to take the chemical enhancements. It seems almost everyone was at it; perhaps we should all have known better. The title of this blog sums it up perfectly.

We now only need to find out Neil Armstrong's 'great step' for mankind was filmed in Hollywood.