The Lance Armstrong confessional - quick thoughts and the bigger picture

by Graham Email

Having read a lot of transcript of the first part of the Oprah interview, here are my quick thoughts:

1. Lance was pretty candid that he used PEDs for all of his career right at the beginning. No weasel words there.
2. Like just about everybody else in the sport who has been prepared to talk about PED usage, he insists that "the culture" of the sport forced him to take PEDs to be competitive, yet he does not want to point at any other competitors. The wall of silence is not yet broken, at least for him.

This is an analysis of the interview from VeloNews. As the analysis shows, there are still a number of things that Lance does not want to talk about, possibly for legal/financial reasons. He is still trying to control the water flow, even though the dam has broken. This shows me that Lance Armstrong has not yet undergone an epiphany, the realization that his old behavior patterns have harmed himself and others, and that he needs to drastically modify his behavior to avoid future issues. He is still being Lance Armstrong The Controller, seeking to maintain some semblance of a charade that he is a Good Guy.
The reasons why Lance was able to maintain the charade are partly to do with his personality (a classic obsessive competitor with NPD), but had a lot to do with the broader public impact of his life narrative and his consequent ability to bring money into the sport. As the old saying goes, a rising tide lifts all boats, and his impact on professional cycling in the 2000s was probably equivalent to that of Tiger Woods in golf. While his fellow competitors might have grumbled privately about his undetected PED use, and been frustrated at not winning when he was around, they probably appreciated the trickle-down impact of the additional revenues and prize money.
The charade extended to most of the media, who went along with it in return for "access" to Lance and his inner circle, and the ability to share in the excitement and mutual support of participating in the Lance Armstrong Brand. Journalistic mea culpas are already part of the fallout of Lance's admissions.
Right now, my considered opinion is that the only way that professional cycling can escape from the PED mess is for a Truth Commission to be convened, where everybody can talk openly about the use of PEDS now and in the past. It is my fear that just about every Tour de France winner of the last 30 years was using PEDs at the time of their wins, and the only question left is who is going to admit it for the good of the future of the sport, or who wants to be a stonewalling holdout.
At this time, no large corporation is going to sponsor a top-flight cycling team. The negatives would outweigh the positives. A number of long-term sponsors have already left the sport, and it would not surprise me if more leave, especially if more riders are either exposed by Lance, or decide to talk openly about past PED use. The only way that the sport can be saved for the future is for a process of catharsis to occur. It will be painful and ugly, but the alternative is that professional cycling as we know it today may collapse to where it was in the 1970's, comprising just the Tour de France and a small number of warmup events, with only a handful of top riders actually making a proper living from the sport.
It is also clear to me that the UCI, and particularly Pat McQuaid, is toast. McQuaid has no credibility left, and I am amazed that the UCI continues to support him. The only correct answer is to dynamite the UCI and start over.
As for the Lance Mess, most of the cure for that rests with Lance Armstrong. The verdict so far on his interviews is Too Little Too Late. He is going to have to do a lot more confessing, apologizing and (dare I say it) groveling if he is to have any chance of rehabilitating both his personal life and public image.
Finally, there is the beginnings of a backlash against Paul Kimmage, one of two journalists (David Walsh being the other) who persistently and consistently argued that Armstrong was doping during his peal winning years. They were mostly shunned, excluded and harshly criticized at the time, and Kimmage may have lost his journlism job because of his refusal to parrot the consensus narrative. Frankly, any journalist or sports leader in cycling who was involved in the sport during the Armstrong Years and is now complaining about Paul Kimmage or David Walsh needs to understand one thing. They have no credibility on this issue. Zip, nada. Therefore, they need to shut up before they dig themselves even further into a hole of stupid, bloviating hypocrtical irrelevance.