If you love sport, you really should despise Lance Armstrong. He pranced out and did his tell-all interview with Oprah, and left most of us hating him more than we did before. It would have been nice to see him face the music in an interview with a serious sports journalist, but then again he was never a true sportsman in the first place. A drug-fuelled athlete who accomplished incredible feats? Maybe, but someone to admire and emulate – certainly not!
This interview was a farce from start to finish. The only thing I found strange was that even though Lance pulled the strings and did this interview completely on his own terms, he was still unable to mask the appalling human being he truly is. My favorite journalist Mike Wilbon from “Pardon the Interruption” summed it up perfectly: “I dislike him more now than I did before the interview … he came across as a loathsome creep.”
The fact that everyone involved in professional cycling back then was on the juice comes as no surprise to me. I don’t really care about cycling – it’s a boring sport which the Europeans can keep as far as I’m concerned. It’s something you do to get to school as a kid because you are too young to drive a car. Lance was not the only one lying – they were all lying. The sport was a farce.
I can buy Lance’s argument that he did it because everyone else was doing it. I can even appreciate how he didn’t feel bad doing it at the time because it was just part of the sport. The real problem I have with Lance is he expects us all to forgive him because he had cancer and raised money for charity. Sometimes bad men do good things, but that doesn’t make them good. History is littered with them.
The truth is Lance used his position at the top of the sport to intimidate and belittle all those around him. Even though he has been publicly disgraced and his fraudulent career is over, Lance remains an arrogant, incredibly rich asshole. However, at least now he’s not such a powerful asshole. I don’t care whether they erase his name from history books, as the sport of cycling doesn’t deserve to have history books. I just hope I don’t have to hear the name Lance Armstrong every time I turn on the television.
