Bryn Lennon/Getty Images[/caption]Celebrities represent the modern-day hero, and like any leading protagonist, they are extremely fallible. Headlines have always been dominated by stories about rich, good-looking people behaving badly and celebrity athletes are certainly no exception.
With all their money and muscles, we’ve seen some of our most beloved “hero” athletes take some pretty bad dives in the press lately. Here are some of the most disappointing ones.
Tiger Woods
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Lori Moffett/Bloomberg/Getty Images[/caption]This shy, nerd-hunk of a golfer turned out to be a major player! Back in 2009, Tiger Woods was ousted on the Internet for cheating on his wife. Come on, man! Why do the sweet ones always get corrupted by fame and fortune?
Woods publicly apologized, and then went to cheater rehab, but he was a day late and a dollar short by that point. Public opinion turned against Tiger faster than his wife could file for divorce.
The story immediately morphed into a “sex scandal” and our sexy, shy-boy golfer was downgraded overnight into just another dude who happened to be really good at doing one thing who let own stardom take him down.
If anyone could retain his humility in the face of being rich and famous, I thought for sure it would be Tiger. Oh how wrong I was.
Lance Armstrong
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AP[/caption]America’s pride and glory of the biking community turned out to be little more than a spotlight-seeking scumbag. Lance Armstrong was the poster child for the notion that any of us could “beat the odds.” He won the Tour De France an astonishing seven times after winning a battle with testicular cancer. He even started his own charity.
Up until a few months ago, he had one of the best reputations in sports, and was known as being nothing short of a hardworking do-gooder. Then the story broke that he had been doping and using performance-enhancing drugs for years.
His many adoring fans did not take too kindly to the idea that all of his miraculous physical achievements in the last decade were not the well-deserved fruits of hard work, but simply the hollow results of sustained drug use. People were outraged.
If it makes you feel any better, Armstrong was taken down about 15 notches in everyone’s books. To begin, he was unceremoniously stripped of all his titles and awards he got while cycling, including all those Tour De Frances titles.
All his sponsors dropped him like a bad habit, the charity that he started basically kicked him out of the picture because his image was so toxic that he was scaring away donors AND he just got slapped with a $12 million lawsuit. Oh, and everyone will hate him forever.
Oh how the mighty do fall.
Oscar Pistorius
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TJ Lemon/EPA[/caption]Oscar Pistorius is a track and field sprinter from South Africa. He is also a double-amputee, missing both his legs from above the knee. Pistorius inspired the whole world last year when he became the first paralympian to compete in the able-bodied Olympic track and field games.
He made headlines at his Olympic debut and quickly became a global icon, but in a startling change of events this past month, Pistorius was arrested and charged with the premeditated murder of his model girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp.
To make matters worse, she was murdered on Valentine’s Day. South African authorities say that Steenkamp was shot multiple times. Authorities later announced that Pistorius had a criminal arrest record for various domestic violence incidents in the past.
Although Pistorius has not yet been convicted, in court his prosecutors revealed that they will pursue a charge of premeditated murder against him. This tragedy brings the hero track runner’s “feel-good” Olympics fairytale to a screeching halt. His certainly won’t be the first celebrity mugshot we’ve seen before.
