D Reilly

Lance Armstrong had an easy ride with Oprah

Lance Armstrong could yet manage to emerge a hero. ‘What’s the crime?’ is all he needs to ask. ‘Who died?’ On one side, a lot of people interested in the somewhat esoteric topic of who can make a bicycle go fastest were conned. On the other, more than half a billion dollars raised to fight cancer. Which is more important?

‘Oprah, I cheated. I cheated to beat a field full of cheats. You got me. But I used my profile to fund research into finding a cure for the greatest killer of our time. If I wasn’t winning, that wouldn’t have happened. You do the math.’

Why didn’t he just say that?

Again and again, Oprah asked him about the lies, seemingly amazed that anyone would ever cling to an untruth. Armstrong, with a winning forbearance, tried to explain. He even went so far as calling himself an ‘arrogant prick’.

Why didn’t he just give the obvious, and truthful, answer? ‘Oprah, when you start lying you have to keep lying. Everyone knows that. Have you read no Shakespeare? I wove a tangled web.’

He didn’t even point out that anyone – and there millions of them – who believes he is solely responsible for doping in cycling wilfully misses the point. It may be clean, or cleaner, now, but top-level endurance cycling has a history of endemic doping that goes back to the 1950s. They were all at it. They have always all been at it.

I am not for a moment suggesting that Armstrong is any type of hero. He is a man who has accumulated vast wealth by shamelessly and remorselessly cheating, and for a decade bullied anyone who said otherwise into submission. But last night’s interview – the first instalment of his time in the chair across from Winfrey – was surely a chance for him to plead some sort of perspective.

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