Wow, looks like he’s really going for the full confession.
And looks like Oprah is going for the serious, no-holds-barred, non-fluffy interview approach.
Oprah is serious business.
Anyway, I don’t care what happens to Lance. He deserves to be a pauper, but that won’t happen.
Equivocating on the Tyler Hamilton details…
“I didn’t read his book.”
You didn’t have to read the book, Lance, just answer the question as asked.
Fascinating. Watching now I’m still reminded when he was a kid phenom just up the road in Plano and what a change his life has gone through.
I think so far he’s pretty straightforward. Let’s see if that holds true.
He’s admitting he doped and all of that and I think he’s talked extensively with image consultants about this confession, but it seems to me he’s still accepting the least amount of responsibility he can. He says he never ordered or outright pushed his teammates to dope, he says he was clean during his comeback despite the USADA report that says he was probably doping, and he says other people were responsible for their own decisions. I can’t say I believe him at all.
He also keeps speaking as if he’s totally detached from the person he was when he was doping. I think that has to be at least partly an act even though you really can be that alienated from a past version of yourself if your perspective changes radically. I think he’s using that rhetorical device to his advantage because it makes it sound like someone else did all the cheating and lying. But that behavior continued until, you know, the last few months or weeks. When did he suddenly gain all this perspective on the person he used to be? Isn’t he the same guy?
“Why’d you give the ICU money?”
“Because they asked me to.”
What a load.
The thing I would want to hear him discuss is how he could set himself up as a hero and an inspiration for people with cancer while living a complete lie. I suppose I’m wondering if he even gave a shit about the people he was deceiving when some of them needed him much more than cycling fans did. Did that matter to him, or was it just another prize he was entitled to or another way to avoid scrutiny for all the cheating he’d done?
Ultimately this is a really unrevealing interview and I think he’s still lying about at least a few things. He’s chuckled and aw-shucks-ed his way through it and there’s no self-reflection or anything approaching remorse. He’s saying he’s sorry because he knows people expect it and there’s something in it for him. That’s not as bad as a lot of the other things he’s done, but it does say he’s still a shitheel.
This is most interesting. As you say, the USADA report was pretty strong on this point. So there’s a couple of possibilities. One is that he really wasn’t doping in his comeback. The other is that it’s too fresh and there would be legal or other repercussions to admitting that he was doping during his comeback.
Personally I believe Lance. I think he’s a changed character and just because he’s always been a shameless liar before today doesn’t mean we shouldn’t believe his denials about doping in 2009/10.
Yeah, right.
There was a fair amount of equivocating in the name of “I don’t want to bring others into this.” There was a fair amount of 3rd-person referencing about himself - “that guy”, etc.
Oprah seemed to stop buying his line of patter pretty early on, imho. Or I’m just reading my reactions into hers, which is also a possibility.
He was honest. But not completely honest - there was a fair amount that he could have gone into further detail. I also don’t get the feeling that he feels sorry in any way.
I’m in the healthcare business, and what we do with patients that lie is, only believe the objective evidence. That’s the only way to tell. So if Lance says he didn’t dope in 09, 10, but the objective evidence says he did…I know who I’m believing.
D.
I’ll start by saying that I’ve been on the Lance doping bandwagon since his very first tour victory and have been catching tons of crap ever since. This information has been out there for a long time and none of it was a surprise to me. I was also sure I was going to the grave with Lance’s denials. I had made my piece with that.
I’m not sure what people were expecting from this interview. You were never going to get scorched earth. People like Johan Bruyneel and Michele Ferrari were accomplices of Lance and are his friends. He stuck with Omerta for too long for me to reasonably expect that he’d rat them out in an Opera interview. He may talk in the whistleblower case, who knows, but not in an interview like this.
I don’t believe the guy is evil, like so many do. I don’t have a ton of respect for him, never have, but that’s as far as it goes. The one thing I’m getting out of this interview is some insight into exactly how his life got to this point and how he was able to hurt some of the people he did. He’s done some truly awful things after all (that begins with Betsy Andreau and Emma O’Reilly).
Despite the fact that he is not being 100 percent honest, I don’t think, one thing for sure is true; What made him successful as an athlete (and he was) also made him successful at raising money for cancer, helped him win in court, and caused him to treat so many people so poorly who he thought crossed him.
Did LA get paid for this interview? I only watched 20 or so minutes, but it seemed kind of pointless. He still seems to be lying, didn’t really give any interesting details about the actual structure of doping and as public apologies go, it was kinda meh as well. He wasn’t particularly introspective or contrite beyond basically repeating “yea, I’m a jerk” in different ways.
I guess I still am not sure of the answer we started the thread with. Why is LA bothering to confess?
Because everybody knows what he did so he might aswell get a few million dollars for saying it?
Betsy wasn’t best pleased with it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTrkBRwT5Uc
Nor WADA
Incidentally, speaking as someone who was skeptical of the allegations before, I just want to state that I accept this as evidence that he did dope. And while it’s not absolute proof that he also doped during his comeback, it is strong circumstantial evidence in that direction. Yeah, yeah, that should go without saying, but I just wanted to get it on the record.
Well, why would he have? It’s been in “everyone knows” territory for a while now that all successful cyclists must dope-- He’d hardly need to tell his teammates that. Heck, many of them were probably doping in the first place in order to get on the team. Why possibly incriminate yourself by saying something outright, when a non-quotable wink-wink-nudge-nudge would do just as well? There are plenty of ways he could have encouraged it without outright ordering it.
That’s why I said "ordered or outright pushed. I should have written “outright ordered or pushed,” but still: the point is he denied ordering anyone to dope and he denied suggesting or implying to anyone that they needed to start doping. He ruled out the scenario you are suggesting, and defies belief.
I said earlier that the interview wasn’t revealing, but what I meant was that he wasn’t opening up. It was very revealing in that it made it clear he’s an unrepentant dick.
He has stolen millions of dollars. What does it take?- kill someone?
Or a third – looking for an eight year retroactive ban that would allow him to compete by year’s end.
After all, what’s one more lie?
No way. He’s banned for life, and they’re not going to downgrade their ban and make it retroactive just because he contradicted their report. Why would they believe him?