STAGE ONE: LANCE v OPRAH: Advantage Lance ... he didn't cry once!!
Well, there you have it. Like a trained assassin -- It was my job, and I was good at it -- Lance Armstrong clinically and with little emotion admitted that he took performance enhancing drugs for each of his seven Tour de France victories to the shock of nobody. What was shocking was to sit there and see him utter the words, stepping away at long last from his lifetime of lies that he had never taken drugs.
It was a limited admission, some will say very disappointing, but after a lifetime of lying, to expect the man to become the bastion of truth overnight would be laughable. You could tell throughout that he was thinking about what how his lawyers had told him to approch it with an eye to implicating himself in serious lawsuits in the future. He looked nervous at times. My wife felt that the way he talked made him sound like a criminal or a psychopath. I felt it made him sound like a politician. With this weight now off his back, I suspect we haven't quite heard the end of his admissions.
But what of stage one tonight?
Well, Oprah handled it better than I feared she might and she wasted no time in getting to the part we all wanted to hear. Straight up she asked him if he took banned substances? I half expected the feed to cut to black right at that moment, but it didn't, and after a brief hesitation Armstrong said "Yes." He said yes to using EPO, blood doping, testosterone, cortisone, human growth hormone and some or all of those banned substances for all seven of his victories.
"At the time it did not feel wrong?" Winfrey asked.
"No," Armstrong replied. "Scary."
"Did you feel bad about it?" she pressed him.
"No," he said. "Even scarier."
"Did you feel in any way that you were cheating?"
"No," Armstrong paused. "Scariest."
"Did you ever have sexual relations with that woman?" she continued ... Okay, so she never asked that.
"I went and looked up the definition of cheat," he added a moment later. "And the definition is to gain an advantage on a rival or foe. I didn't view it that way. I viewed it as a level playing field." So Lance checked the dictionary and it said he didn't cheat. Now he clearly sees it a differently as the vultures come home to roost.
When later asked about whether he doped during his second comeback in 2009 and 2010, Armstrong said, "Absolutely not." That was one of the more surprising admissions for there is evidence out there that suggests his biological passport -- which Armstrong himself admitted was a "game changer" in the fight against doping -- hinted strongly at unnatural manipulation. Why then admit to doping in the seven Tour's he won, but deny that he did in tours he finished but third and twenty-third? Some suggest that this is because those Tours still fall under the statute of limitations for federal prosecution, while others have suggested that he just isn't ready to tell the whole truth yet. Or maybe it's that he has lied for so long that he actually believes some of those lies to now be true.
I find it hard to believe him when he says he stopped taking drugs in 2005. It seems far too convenient right now. As does his denial that he ever forced his team-mates to dope, contrary to what Christian Vande Velde said in his affidavit to the USADA.
And then came the subject many cycling fans had been waiting for. It was about midway through the interview but was followed by a large gust of air passing through the room ... it was later reported to be the sigh of relief coming from a-top UCI towers when Armstrong failed to implicate cycling's governing body in any of it. According to Lance the biggest doping coverup in the history of cycling was achieved solely by Lance. Believe it? Well, conclude for yourself though I highly doubt many do.
As the interview went on it became apparent that Armstrong only wanted to admit to what he had done and not deal with anything or anyone else. Lance claimed he has been reaching out to those he has hurt. He says he spoke to Betsy Andreu and Emma O'Reilly, but if he truly is out to make amends, then he didn't do a great job of it. He admitted that in the past he had called Betsy a liar and a bitch, but with a smirk, he told Oprah that he never called Betsy fat. So that's ok then? Well, not for Betsy who later on CNN was furious with how Armstrong approached the subject.
Another he claims to have reached out to was Emma O'Reilly, a former soigneur of Armstrong at the US Postal team who in the past spoke out about his doping. When asked about the legal action he put O'Reilly through, Armstrong claimed he had sued so many people he no longer remembered them all. To say that about a case that would have put a tremendous financial and mental strain on O'Reilly isn't doing himself any favours whatsoever if he is genuinely looking to gain forgiveness from those he tried to destroy.
If anything it dug a deeper hole and proved that while he may be ready to tell some of the truth, shaking the arrogance that he has built up over his career is going to take a lot longer.
This is only the halfway point. There's another night to come. I still hope we hear about how he feels on the treatment he dished out to fellow professionals Christophe Bassons and Filippo Simeoni, though if the preview is anything to go by it seems the topic is going to shift to how the whole thing has affected Armstrong from a personal point of view. It'll talk about his sponsors, his charity and his family. He'll talk about how his kids have reached the age where they are painfully aware of the whole thing with his eldest son even going into school to defend his dad.
Stay tuned ... I'll have a review of that stage once it's over.
