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Lance Armstrong Photo by Maryse Alberti, Courtesy of Sony Pictures ClassicsThird time unlucky – Armstrong involved in another awkward interview with an Irish journalist
After long being pursued by David Walsh and Paul Kimmage, you’d think Lance Armstrong would be keen to steer clear of Irish journalists. Not a bit of it. This week he took part in an occasionally tense interview with Ger Gilroy for NewsTalk’s Off the Ball podcast. This comes ahead of an appearance at the One Zero conference in Dublin in a couple of weeks’ time where he is due to be interviewed by freelance journalist Ewan MacKenna.
Over the course of a half-hour interview, Armstrong called Gilroy “Superman” and “rookie” and appeared to hang up on him without saying goodbye. However, he did also refer to himself as “a complete dickhead” so the interviewer did at least manage the unusual feat of wringing a nugget of truth out of him.
Over the course of the podcast, Armstrong talks about his attempts to apologise to the Andreus and the LeMonds with Gilroy occasionally leaving long pauses when he seems dubious about the Texan’s answers.
Another chunk of dead air occurs when discussing whether Armstrong still has seven yellow jersey on display in his home. “Absolutely,” is his one-word response.
Armstrong also reaffirmed his desire to sit down for an interview with Paul Kimmage having tweeted the Irishman last week to ask whether he was willing to conduct the interview at the One Zero conference.
"Paul's an interesting case. I had one interaction with Paul at the press conference in California. I didn't handle it right. I'd love to, whether it's in an interview or over a beer or whatever, I'd sit with Paul any time and say 'Hey, my bad, I'm sorry. I was a complete dickhead."
Armstrong said that Kimmage wanted to do an interview and added: “I'm happy to sit down with him at some point."
Alex has written for more cricket publications than the rest of the road.cc team combined. Despite the apparent evidence of this picture, he doesn't especially like cake.
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23 comments
Armstrong's "mistake" was that he tried to blow the whistle on the entire circus - other riders such as Virenque protected their own backs, confessing and apologising, and thereby maintining the illusion of a clean sport to sell to the unsuspecting general public - anyone involved in such big business at any significant level will know what really goes on behind the facade - it's an open secret.
He was a dick to Betsy Andreu, Emma O'Reilly, Tyler Hamilton, Floyd Landis, Christophe Bassons and let's say 200 other pro cyclists. He cheated at bicycle racing. He also put a lot of time into cancer fundraising and raised $0.5 billion through Livestrong. People like to be able to class athletes and other celebrities as either good or bad but the reality is more complicated than that.
'He was a dick'.
Funny how you define his good work appropriately, but financial and career destruction gets defined crudely as 'being a dick'.
Everyone's good and bad. Neither here nor there. He was the worst and that's before you even get into the cheating.
Ok
Lance never failed a test, he confessed.
Albero Contador failed a test.
Eddie Mercx.
Bjarne Riise
Jan Ulrich.
as for the idea that LA was somehow so much more a nasty than others seems naive in the extreme. We like to think that others are nice, reality is it was a highly organised cheat and he was the best rider so picked to be the winning cheat in that team.
The cheating was rife throughout and he as did all the riders, had enough to do to ride without organising all the cheating it was a team effort and they can bleat as much as they like but all of US Postal team were at it, and that includes dominating the peloton and bullying others. The whole time all the scene had this terrrible closed ranks attitude, 'don't spit in the soup'.
Yes, LA is a scapegoat, the figurehead of the result of a sport that was wholesale cheating. Not sure that anything else could have been done to clean it up other than be realistic and a little fairer toward one of the major protaganists.
Good that a line has been drawn under that era (I naively hope), not great that so many are unpunished. LA? Got his lifetime ban, career purged, I'd leave it pretty much at that.
His is still an incredible story, riddled with cancer to return to being one of the best cyclist of all time. Clean? He might have won a few one day races. Anyway not the point, he could not of done it without all the others. So no I don't think he is the nicest nor that the other cheaters are so much better.
Name one rider even nearly as life wrecking or nasty as LA? Better be prepared to back it up.
Name one rider even nearly as life wrecking or nasty as LA? Better be prepared to back it up.
[/quote]
Yeah because nicknames like Cannibal and Badger were the sort of nicknames used to describe nice gentle cyclists....
... you sound like a bit of a casual, cyclings been full of pricks and ar$eholes for years, hard men, ruthless men etc but you have no evidence (and few do that were there) however it sounds like pretty little actual knowledge of the 'stories' whats gone one in pro cycling, who was nice and not nice, what went on through the 70's and 80's and before etc -cyclist have sabotaged, poisened, punched, colluded against, cheated etc etc since the dawn of the sport - every one of those cyclists, managers, administrators in the 99's -00's (and before) who did nothing to stop doping was life 'wrecking' for those that weren't willing to dope, however you fail to accept at the time they also orchestrated an increase in the popularity of the sport- but because people quotes half a dozen names like boasson, o'reilly, andreu, lemond, kimmage and walsh, they feel they can stand Armstrong up against mass murderers in the levels of vitreol used when dicussing him, bit don't forget he made cycling popular in the mainstream positively influencing peoples lives..
Armstrong was at the 'top' of his game, alot of sports people and other people at 'the top of their game' are self absorbed, obnoxious,self centred, ruthless etc - they're often traits identified in people who have a desire to be at the top of the pile and whilst I'm not saying its correct, it not un common and I would say its easier to name 10 'top' stars like it to every 1 that isn't... they like Armstrong have huge amounts of PR used to not generally appear that way, until someone whos been so disgruntled has nothing to loose speaks out against them.
But Armstrong wasn't at every sngle pro road race from the late 90's - 00's when EPO, type blood doping was rife so he can't be to blame for it all, lets face it he was readily criticised for being a champion who only turned up to a few the and the TdF, so what I'm trying to understand is what do people hate the fact that he was a doper, an arsehole or an arsehole and a doper? or just one of those three and 'successful'... as the level of hypocrisy shown to him as absurd when you take a rational view of it all.
So tell this casual of a single cyclist who ruined careers, and dragged families through legal and financial ruin as bad as LA. Someone having a nickname Cannibal for being self-centered- not quite the same thing, 'Mr. rational'.
Waiting.
The people comparing Armstrong to your run of the mill doper don't know anything about cycling. He was levels above the rest, a complete fuckwit to everybody involved.
Can't we just ignore the cheating git? I can't see any merit in him.
Lance who?
Which tour winners, post Lance, have been allow to keep their results when they failed a PED test?
Lance did two things wrong - be (by far) the most successfull cheet just when the athorities were making a push to clean the sport up - and be a complete d*ck about it when caught.
Sometimes a line does need to be drawn, and an example needs to be made.
It does actually keep the door open to reinstantment, should he decide to reform - even if that seems far fetched at present.
Yes agree with Davel - that's the reality. People are drawn to personalities. You can be a lovable rogue, or an obnoxious rogue.
Guess which one people will shit on. Not rocket science.
Much of the distaste for Armstrong is over his methods: the bullying, the shit-on-everyone-else philosophy. Contrast with Pantani's story of effectively being bullied into doing what everyone else was doing, possible mafia involvement, ultimately not being able to handle it and checking out way too soon.
Of course, it's not that black and white. Both of the protagonists in those tales at opposite end of the scale were extremely successful in an era when only cheats prospered. Armstrong isn't the devil incarnate and Pantani shouldn't be beatified.
The convenience of Armstrong as villain threatens the lesson that should be learnt: they were all at it. As such, it's easier to keep wheeling him out in the pillory for more rotten fruit and not clean up the source of the stink ( this is probably my major criticism regarding his ego not letting him crawl under a rock and stay there - piss off Lance: you're too much of a distraction and you're not cycling's saviour).
You don't have to warp your imagination too much to picture us 10 years from now debating whether palmares achieved in the TUE era should be wiped.
Agree. He shat on people. What goes around comes around Lance. Unfortunately he can't bear not being the centre of attention.
The simlarities to Trump are astounding.
"What? I did that? Hey, I'm sorry, my bad. Let's move on okay"
It is a very fair point that if LA has all his results purged then so should all the other cheats, at least all wins prior to being busted. What would that do to the record books? No Eddie Mercx, Bertie Contador would lose a lot.
Seriously sad to see the record books displaying Bjarne Riis, Jan Ulrich and Marco Pantani as 'winners' immediately prior to Lance's era, what a joke.
In the endless Lancenology, I just want to add that he inspired in great degree Americans. to get off their SUVs and ride bikes again. Something that the past decade is happening in the UK with all the superstar riders. I don't care about racing and if a bunch of guys decided to ruin their health and moral values for fame and money, but I certainly care about removing cars and their emissions from our streets. So I am happy with Lance existence.
The things I do agree with, with him, are, who won the Tours if he didnt? Why not pass the jersey to the 2nd place man? Oh yeah, because he was doping too. And what of the other Tour winners who have subsequently been proven as dopers, why have they not had their records expunged from history.
Dont get me wrong I'm not a Lance lover in any respect, except I think the whole story is one of the greatest stories ever told, up there with Santa Claus.
It does wind me up when I see Eddy Mercx presenting trophies at the worlds as another proven doper, and yet LA is left to pedal his story on a 2nd rate Irish radio show. Its time all the dopers were named, shamed and de-categorised, or despite the bad taste it would leave, just leave the record books as they were.
He was just the most successful rider of an era of cheating.
Think Ullrich, Pantani etc weren't cheats either? Bull.
Still the best of his era and one of th e best of all time, distasteful though it is.
Ideologically he cheated.
Realistically he didn't.
I don't understand why Paul Kimmage would want to interview the "complete dickhead". Leave it alone Paul, you have been seen to be right, dont give the tosser the opportunity to promote himself further.
Remember when, after he retired the first time, and he was an all-American hero in the eyes of many, a career in politics for Lance was thought to be a distinct possibilty. He had been very pally with George Bush so, for all we knew back then, he could have followed the same path through governorship of Texas to winning the Republican nomination in some far off future election, say 2016. The world certainly dodged a bullet there. Imagine, someone so venal, so amoral, so incapable of seeing their own limitations, running for President of the United States. It doesn't bear thinking about.
Agree, thank goodness that isn't happening right now
He is the face of dishonest cheating in cycling. He wasn't the first and won't be the last, but as a 7 times winner that was outed as a cheat, he took the fall.
Hopefully they will investigate the Lance era, find out who the cheats were, draw a line under it, then make sure it doesn't happen again.