Last
week Lance Armstrong finally confessed to his use of EPO and other
performance enhancing drugs hopefully bringing a symbolic close to
the most shaming period in the sport’s history. His blunt,
emotionally blank, staccato admission opened the interview and
provided Oprah Winfrey with her headline clip but beyond that there
was little of comfort to a cycling fan. Armstrong was an abrasive,
combative, and domineering competitor, berating and humiliating other
riders even when winning and was no different as he waved goodbye to
his career and reputation.
The
televised confessional is not a recent revelation and, while they can
be cathartic exercises, most cycling commentators were braced for the
kind of overt victim status seeking posturing last seen in Oprah's
catastrophically bad interview with Marion Jones where she attempted
a bare faced rewriting of established fact. In actuality Armstrong
was just too wedded to his self image of Texan bravado to do anything
so debased as asking forgiveness, instead he blustered his way
through a mess of partial admissions, faux sympathy and continued
belligerence. He attempted to pin together an incoherent tale of his
cancer conditioning him to relentlessly focus on success at all
costs. Turning him from a cyclist into the orchestrator of an entire
team built around the careful administration of various drugs but
even this interpretation of his past clashes with his own admission
of drug use before his cancer. It seems Armstrong has found a
previously undiscovered moral dividing line between unsuccessful and
successful cheating where one can be deemed acceptable, whilst the
other is a matter for subsequent apology. Mere unsuccessful doping is
a matter of course for a professional like Armstrong, he seemed to
imply, again putting the lie to his apology. This failed construction
of a new narrative was just one example of Armstrong refusing to
simply admit what has become clear to everyone else. He cheated
because he could, he lied about it because he thought himself
impregnable and he confessed because he had lost all other avenues.
No other story fits the revealed facts of his career.
USADA
referred to as the “most
sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that
sport has ever seen.”
Armstong rebutted this characterisation by saying his feats did not
compare to the state sponsored doping of East German athletes in the
70's and 80s. It was one of a series of moments where it became clear
how begrudgingly Armstrong had finally submitted to the
insurmountable proof of his wrongdoing. Elsewhere he continued to
insist that his 2009 comeback was clean when most, including USADA,
feel it cannot be and Armstrong admitted he did not feel he was
cheating at the time as he was doing nothing anybody else couldn't
do. Armstrong trod a fine, deliberately obfuscating line, between
implying the rest of the Tour was also doping and refusing to talk
about anyone other individual's doping. In fact this goes to the
heart of Armstrong's thinking. He claims that he had access to
nothing different from the rest of the Tour, whilst admitting that he
saw doping as part of cycling just like inflating tyres or carrying
water bottles. It feels like he is still proud of his achievements as
if doping better than any of his competitors is a kind of victory. It
painted a portrait of a man who still doesn't regard his actions as
anywhere near morally wrong.
Armstrong
appeared a deeply cold individual, unable to summon an ounce of
empathy for his various victims. His barely conceivable claim that he
was unsure whether he'd sued his masseuse, Emma O'Reilly, was
stretching the bounds of common decency but his later attempt to joke
he had never call Betsy Andreu 'fat' although he had called her a
'crazy bitch' pushing the interview into the realms of parody.
Armstrong was unable to admit his hatred for those people who had
tried to bring him down. Such hatred would be understandable, he had
lived a lie and used it to conquer the sporting world and these
people were attempting to expose him and end his life as he knew it.
But his refusal to admit such a base emotion speaks volumes for his
understanding of his place within the story. While accepting, and
using bland insults to describe his behaviour, 'jerk', 'arrogant
prick' and 'lame', he never espoused a feeling or emotion unless
prompted by Winfrey. He appeared as if a child, waiting for a teacher
to prompt him on the correct response. Even his apologies lacked any
conviction, heart or honesty. Most tellingly when confronted with
perhaps the most obvious apology of all, to David Walsh, the
journalist almost sued out of his profession for the unforgivable sin
of picking apart Lance's web of lies some time before any anti doping
agency was interested, Armstrong fluffed his lines. He stuttered,
required further prompting from Oprah and then barely mumbled out the
line “I'd apologise to David Walsh”. Notice the bizarre phrasing,
he doesn't say “I apologise” which he could do given he'd be
pretty sure Walsh would be watching, not “I have apologised”
showing he'd taken the proactive step of contacting one of his most
determined pursuers, not even “I will apologise” which fails the
most basic test of being an actual apology but at least confirms one
is coming. Instead “I'd apologise”, implying he hasn't yet, isn't
at the moment, and won't guarantee an apology, or even name his
terms. Even at this time, even after his admissions, the weight of
evidence and the confessions of nearly all his team mates, Lance is
still unable to vocalise an unqualified apology. Instead he deferred
it.
There
is one large body of people to whom Armstrong was completely unable
to verbalise a coherent, convincing apology or explanation. His fans,
and those of cycling in general. In 2001, Lance Armstrong asserted
himself as the most dominant cyclist for a generation. Having
appeared to struggle at the base of Alpe d’Huez, one of the Tour’s
iconic climbs, his rivals had set a punishing pace thinning the herd
to a few select potential tour winning cyclists. Armstrong cycled to
the front, turned to stare in the face of his chief rival, Jan
Ullrich, and attacked at devastating speed. Ullrich had nothing to
answer with as Lance built a margin that would ultimately win him the
Tour. The cold stare from Armstrong was a primal assertion of
superiority, daring his foe to do anything to stop him and, when
Ullrich was unable to utter even a timid response, it was clear the
sport of cycling had one ultimate lord and master.
It
was the defining moment of the Armstrong years and has gone down in
sporting folklore as ‘The Look’ but like hundreds of other
memories from the fifteen year EPO era of cycling it has been washed
away by a torrent of brazen cheating and lying. Like chapters torn
from a manuscript and thrown in the fire they have left cycling's
story incomplete and unsatisfying. It is the fans who suffer, the
seven year stretch of the Tour that will stay as “Not awarded”
forever in the record books represent the wasted time they spent
watching a false competition determined in the laboratory not on the
road.
Instead
of all their shared moments like The Look there is a different memory
that comes to the fore. Lance Armstrong atop the podium having won
his record seventh tour, microphone in hand, berating his, at this
stage relatively few, attackers and doubters. "I'm
sorry you can't dream big and I'm sorry you don't believe in
miracles".
Whilst
its arrogance and defiance is classic Armstrong there is something
else at work there, it is a man hounded by the knowledge his
victories are false. Where others would celebrate he could not, he
could only attack, defending his emperor's clothes, his yellow
jerseys, attempting to convince himself and the world that what he
had achieved mattered, that it meant something. Armstrong had a
chance to bring closure to this era and perhaps for himself. He
failed. He remains a pariah and deservedly so. As the IOC threaten
the UCI over their complete failure to deal with Armstrong era
doping, this one time hero's legacy may now be the destruction of
the sport he proclaimed to love.
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