Lance Armstrong to be interviewed by Oprah

if he confesses or defends, if its heavily scripted and prepared or not, it will still be one to watch.

My own view is he probably did take the drugs which is a real real shame. At the same time a lot of his competitors clearly also did. Its easy to just say he made a huge error, easy to rubbish the guy for this but I feel thats just a bit too easy. The ethos of the peleton was doping. Leaders in the team have to perform and the pressure is on. This doesnt make a wrong turn into a right. But condeming the man in black and white way really seems to me unfair. Life is much more grey than that. Blurry.

The great sadness for me is that many of those who cheated were fundamentally great cyclists anyway but their ego’s and the ethos encouraged cheating. Such a shame. Lance would probably still have won a tour or three if he and the peloton were all clean.

It’s not the fact he doped, everyone knew that anyway [apart from Hora]

It’s the way he’s tried to bully everyone and anyone into silence about it

If its a confession to anything it will have already been hammered out between his lawyers, the authorities and the companies claiming from him.
I never imagined the tour could be won clean then and to be honest I’m not sure it can be now. Who knows?

What I think is if they were too stupid, too inadequate, too corrupt and too slow to catch him for 7 not 1 but 7 years then shame on them. He deserves his titles and shouldn’t be stripped of them based on the plea bargain deals of a bunch of fellow liars and cheats.

I remain a fan of Armstrong he is an extraordinary man and athlete, I hope as part of any confession he publishes his entire SRM training data just to show how hard he did work to win the tour 7 times and that it isn’t just won by doping

I read Lance’s “its not about the bike” and Tyler Hamiltons “The secret race”.

Brilliant – 2 completely different descriptions of exactly the same events
One of them is a work of fiction – I think I know which one 🙂

If its a confession to anything it will have already been hammered out between his lawyers, the authorities and the companies claiming from him.

If it is a confession, the Feds will want jail time, he has nothing else to give them and they’re rather particular about being lied to under oath.

What I think is if they were too stupid, too inadequate, too corrupt and too slow to catch him for 7 not 1 but 7 years then shame on them.

What if the difference was that their drug regimes weren’t quite as good as his? Or that they didn’t respond quite as well to the drugs? Shame on them for having inadequate doctors?

jota180 – Member

If it is a confession, the Feds will want jail time,

They didn’t seem to care about jail time when they concluded their investigations and inexplicably dropped the case.

They’ll certainly care if he stands up and says he lied to them

He clearly doesn’t think he’s damaged the sport quite enough. What a sad self aggrandising sociopath.

I wish he’d just keep his lying mouth shut, admit it all in a press release then **** off. Forever.

Right, I feel much better now!

He clearly doesn’t think he’s damaged the sport quite enough

I don’t suppose “the sport” even enters his mind when he’s considering what would be best for LA.

They didn’t seem to care about jail time when they concluded their investigations and inexplicably dropped the case.

Do you think any Administration would crucify an “All American Hero” in election year? IIRC, the guy who officially dropped the case was a new appointment by Mr Obama’s team.

I remain a fan of Armstrong he is an extraordinary man and athlete

Clearly you’re not a fan of cycling then. The only thing extraordinary about him is the way he behaved. Bullying people out of the sport, slandering others, threats of physical violence against people speaking against him (actually said he’d love to break a baseball bat over Betsy Andreu’s head), lying and so on.

I think with any luck, the US government will reopen the case (it was never closed, just put aside) and wing him off to the pokey for a while, even just 6 months.

I remain a fan of Armstrong he is an extraordinary man

O’Reilly said she was slightly nervous before the publication of the interviews, but had no idea that the retaliation from Armstrong and others would be so strong. Armstrong sued O’Reilly and the Sunday Times, which had serialised the book. The legal battle lasted three years. “He was suing me for more than I was worth,” O’Reilly said. “I was worried he would bankrupt me.”

In the end, as part of a settlement, the Sunday Times wrote an apology. O’Reilly paid no money, she said. “Emma suffered from the lawsuit the most,” Walsh said this week. “This woman was an opponent of Lance Armstrong and was completely vilified.

Suing ordinary people for telling the truth? Extraordinary.

I wish everyone had the strength of will to just ignore him now.
Don’t report what he says or does
Don’t interview him
Don’t watch anything to do with him
Don’t buy his inevitable book

Unfortunately all this publicity will just make him more money, which I think is what this particular interview is all about.

Streamed live??? I dont think so!

The ‘live’ bit refers to it being simultaneously broadcasted online at the same time as it being shown on OWN TV channel.

It’s to be filmed at his Austin, Texas home and the network have refused to disclose when it is being filmed.

Plenty of opportunity for preparing appropriate responses to appropriately searching questions then….

Channel4 have a piece on their 7 o’clock news about his upcoming love-in with Oprah

It’s not the fact he doped, everyone knew that anyway [apart from Hora]

It’s the way he’s tried to bully everyone and anyone into silence about it
Hora?

I’ve realised, though, that reading Hamilton’s book will be a lot less fun if Armstrong does come clean. But it’s hard to see him doing so, realistically – not only perjury, but everyone coming out of the woodwork to sue: sponsors, prize money funders, teams PLUS Tyggart nailing him up on the ‘using federal funds to buy narcotics/ USPS’ case.

shouldn’t be stripped of them based on the plea bargain deals of a bunch of fellow liars and cheats.

so your point is the lying cheat should keep them 😕

I hope as part of any confession he publishes his entire SRM training data just to show how hard he did work to win the tour 7 times and that it isn’t just won by without doping

FTFY to make it true

not sure what your point is – the drugs only made him faster when he raced but did not allow him to train any harder?

Even if we ignore his cheating what he did to those who opposed him is how we should measure him as a man and as hero.

He fails the standard by a larger margin than he dominated the tour and in this respect he truly was an exceptional and world class bully and cheat.
If you want to respect that feel free

Is the broadcast on the same day as the TdF news conference from Leeds and Paris anouncing the route for the Yorkshire stages.

I hope he doesn’t steal the news and pi$$ on Yorkshire’s chips. He probably will,

C

I suspect he’ll try and emphasise just how much hard work and training he had to do on top of all the drug taking in order to win. You know, like all the other cyclists didn’t have to do too.

It’s funny isn’t it? Everyone who professes not to care, wishes he’d just disappear etc is on here commmenting on it. Deep down, you know that you’ll watch it or at least follow it on Twitter or via what will no doubt be 3 or 4 threads on here.

LA is doing all this on HIS terms and conditions. I’ve no idea what has gone on in the background – negotiations with lawyers, producers or whatever – but LA is back in the limelight and almost certainly making a massive profit from it. I can only imagine what the network is charging advertisers for a slot in that 90 minutes!

Personally I’m quite mixed about the whole thing. I admire the 7 Tour wins. The drugs didn’t do that on their own, he remains one of the worlds best athletes; he still had to get out of bed and ride the bike. However his behaviour – the bullying, lawsuits, lying, cheating – is utterly disgraceful.

What will be fascinating though is what happens with Bruyneel. He’s contesting the charges brought against him in a Court of Arbitration so if (and it’s a big if!) LA does come clean (pun intended) and give the whole “here’s how we did it, here’s who was involved” story then it’ll royally shaft Johan Bruyneel’s defence.

I’m willing to bet that LA has spent the last few months going over every last detail of this and will actually come out of it reasosnably well. “well” being a relative term but basically without losing more than a few million dollars and without doing any jail time.
The other alternative of course is that it’s all a massive farce and Oprah asks a few carefully prepared gentle questions and LA goes off on why it’s all a big set-up against him and how he’s pure as the driven snow…

It’s funny isn’t it? Everyone who professes not to care, wishes he’d just disappear etc is on here commmenting on it. Deep down, you know that you’ll watch it or at least follow it on Twitter or via what will no doubt be 3 or 4 threads on here.

I’m only here to slag him off, and will make an active effort not to watch – I’m not really all that interested in listening to his lies. It’s not like I don’t care – I care a lot about all the harm he’s done. Doubtless I will catch up later though.

I wouldn’t put your last scenario past him though – all the hints about a confession just being a big build up so he gets more publicity for a non-confession (I’m guessing he still believes he can con lots of people).

I don’t want him to go away, I want to see him face all the people who’s lives he ruined or at least tried to. I don’t want him to have the luxury of hiding anywhere unless it’s in a Federal cell

David Millar isn’t impressed

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/cycling/20964728

I think we should run a sweepstake thread for how long it takes him to cry. I give him 19m 27secs
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45 more years

I think we should run a sweepstake thread for how long it takes him to cry. I give him 19m 27secs

Someone has done it for you. Ladbrokes have opened a book on phrases Lance Armstrong may – or may not – use when he’s interviewed by Oprah next week.

Wager your shirt here

A sweepstake on how much of the 90 minutes is taken up with talk of the fight against cancer? I reckon 30 mins tops on doping, the rest on the cancer crusade. Even any talk of doping will probably be mostly about how he wants to set the record straight so he can get back to cancer fighting.

I think with any luck, the US government will reopen the case (it was never closed, just put aside) and wing him off to the pokey for a while, even just 6 months.

Originally it was reported that a guilty verdict in the federal case would carry a sentence between 5 & 40 years – it’s the reason I still doubt a confession will be forthcoming.

He has defined cycling for the last 15+ years, and will no doubt, be the biggest name in cycling this year without even riding his bike! Chapeau Lance 😀

He can effectively confess by saying “he did things he wasn’t proud of”, “he’s made mistakes”, “he’s ashamed of how he’s treated people in the past” etc. without going into specifics. He’ll have preagreed with Oprah that she won’t push for details so he can confess in a way so vague there’ll be no legal comeback and then spend 90% of the time justifying himself and rebuilding his reputation

Here you go – a handy guide to next week’s viewing.

🙂

^^ Classic! crazy-legs you made my day!

I’m waiting for the bit where he tugs at a nations heart strings by telling how sport saved him from going off the rails as a youth and ending up in a downward spiral of drug abuse.

Oh wait…

Have just read that the show will be recorded. Waste of time