Watching Lance Armstrong's interview with Oprah, you get the feeling that this was supposed to be presented as news to some people. As if it were a surprise in any way at all the Armstrong had taken PEDs, that all the things that Tyler Hamilton and other former teammates had said about him was true.
To me, the fact that Armstrong now came out and admitted to PED use doesn't change a thing about the way I feel about him. Back in the years 2002-2004, I was highly critical of Armstrong. I don't know how many of my articles are still left at www.cyclingworld.dk, and they're in Danish anyway, but I had a pretty consistent record of Armstrong-criticism back then.
But I was never critical of Armstorng because I had the impression his advanced PED knowledge was what made the difference. If anything, cycling talent came close a couple times to actually overpowering him (Ullrich might not have been clean either, but you always had the feeling if Mother Nature had decided those Tours, that Ullrich would have won by a huge margin). I did, of course, agree with Greg LeMond when he wrote that 'Armstrong was never this good - he was supposed to be a mediocre cyclist', and then the PEDs took him to the next level. God only knows how many others that was true of back in the EPO era of cycling (my compatriot Bjarne Riis certainly comes to mind).
No, what I was critical of was Armstrong's personality. As those who really know cycling, and I'm happy to mention Danish filmmaker Jørgen Leth again hee, will know, personality goes a long way in that sport. Because you spend hours and hours in their company, you feel like you get an impression of the riders' personalities.
Sometimes you are wrong, of course, as most Danish people probably are with people like Tony Rominger and Claudio Chiappucci after the Danish TV's coverage of the '92-'93 Tours. But most of the times, you can spot riders' personality features pretty easily over the course of 21 times 7 hours of racing action in a Tour de France.
Lance Armstrong's personality was something cycling had never seen before. He was not well liked among his peers as a brazen young one-day rider, but of course that cancer made most people forget about those days. When he came back, though, Lance Armstrong turned out to be the least likeable Tour de France winner in history - especially when you add his paranoid, manic and aggressive personality to the kind of domination he could exercise over the peloton.
He was greedy (only let a hopelessly beaten overall competitor win a stage if it doubled as a psychological submission of said competitor; see Basso, Ivan 2004). He threatened witnesses with in-race badgering (see Simeoni, Filippo; also 2004). He deliberately misinterpreted race action in order to make his competitors look bad in the media (see the Luz Ardiden incident, 2003). He changed cycling from a gentleman's sport that took place on the regular roads for all people to follow closehand to a sport for ego-driven maniacs who use any means necessary to win. The Alberto Contador years were a clear sign of this permanent change in the sport. Personality-wise, Lance Armstrong was all that his great predecessor, Miguel Indurain, wasn't. And because he won so much, everyone in cycling had to both follow his methods and pretend they liked him rather than fear his actions on and off the bike.
He changed cycling not only to the worse, but to something that's not worth watching anymore. That's why I was, and remain, highly critical of Armstrong.
Does it matter that he got stripped of his seven Tour titles? No. The images of his obsessive stare when riding up the Luz Ardiden in 2003 can't be erased. The fact that over seven long years, and the ones that followed, cycling deteriorated as a spectator sport, that can't be erased either. I have read many well-written pieces by American sports journalists regretting how Lance Armstrong was able to trick them. Make them defend him. Lie to them while looking them dead in the eye.
That's progress. People who were blinded by Armstrong's tremendous results back then now realize what kind of person he was all along. I have known that since the mid 90's. It's just a pleasure to watch now how Armstrong must go through what he made others (Hamilton, Landis, LeMond, etc.) go through. Have a nice life, Lance!
Now, that's why the Oprah interview doesn't change how I feel about the guy. I never liked him. I still don't. Much of the stuff he said to Oprah could, if it had been anyone else, be interpreted as remorse. As insight, as if he had seen himself how big a 'jerk' he was, to use his own expression.
But that is only if you believe him. I never did. And at this point, who does?
