George Karl, the coach of the Denver Nuggets basketball team, has commented on the Armstrong doping mess. Karl himself is a cancer survivor.
Karl has started his own foundation which received support from Livestrong. He was asked by a local sports newscaster if he still supports Armstrong.
“That’s a hard question. Do I support him as a person who’s done a tremendous job for cancer research and cancer navigation? (Heck) yes I do. I want Livestrong to survive. I don’t know if he’s going to be a part of that or not, but I want his mission to continue. And if I can help Livestrong do that, I will. I thnk the scenario you’re asking me to define, as a coach in athletics, is sad. But it’s the era that we have to live in.”
He was then asked if Armstrong should continue to lead the fight against cancer and he said “If you knew anything about cancer, the answer to that is yes. Livestrong, in my mind, is the No. 1 cancer navigation system for patients in cancer care right now. They’ve done a tremendous job. I would support him. He’s welcome to be a part of anything I’m a part of with cancer care.”
When Karl was an athlete himself he admits having heard bits about doping, mostly in other countries. He said that at the time if he’d been approached to take something that wasn’t illegal then and would have made him better, he doesn’t know if he’d have been able to say no. “I don’t want to play judge and jury on this one, because most of the information I’ve seen shows that about 90% of the people were doing the same thing he was doing. And maybe it was a business decision more than an athletic decision.”
“And I don’t want to sit here an ay I support what he did. I respect greatness, and his winning 7 Tour de Frances is a great feat. Now, was he enhanced by it? So be it. But he still had to do an awful lot of training and an awful lot of competing the right way to do what he did. His ethics might have been incorrect, but I’m not going to be judge and jury.”
