Maybe some people expected to get some new insight on the whole Lance Armstrong doping scandal. It’s going to be hard finding anyone holding any shred of respect left for the man who cheated his way into glory, but pulling off one of the greatest con jobs seen in professional sports.
Yes, he did do a lot for those battling cancers. Some good did come out of all of this. But despite Armstrong battling and beating cancer himself, you can’t help but believe it was all just another lie told to further mask the truth, which was about a man, who knew that what he was doing was wrong, but still injected himself with illegal substances, only to deny the allegations against him for years upon years after that.
Nothing Armstrong said on the Oprah interviews was new, not to those who only need facts to determine their opinions about him. When you look at Armstrong’s twitter feed over the past few months, you can see there are many who didn’t really care about the allegations, the findings, the stripped titles. Armstrong was their hero, but their hero crashed and burned in front of them.
Maybe the more vexing thing about all this is that Armstrong didn’t look too emotional. Not a man taking years of burdens, a huge weight off his chest. Just someone who casually admits to more than a decade of doping, more than a decade of deceit, as if it was nothing. As if lying to become and idol to millions is OK; as if talking about the “culture” and comparing himself to the Eastern Germany doping program in the 70’s and 80’s, saying he’s nothing like that, makes it OK.
Armstrong is one cold MF. He didn’t flinch, just said yes and no and went on to explain what was already known. How he did it, what he took, who he took it with. Getting caught up in the moment doesn’t explain it. People tend to forgive to a lot of things, but sport fraud is a serious sin in the eyes of too many people for Armstrong to ever rebuild his reputation. Maybe he doesn’t want to. He just wants to put it all behind him. Maybe he thought he could, but it just didn’t go away. Admission to guilt doesn’t make you any less guilty; it just convinces those who still had faith in him that he really was that bad.
A new chapter? No one cares anymore. Not a real catharsis, or maybe it was for Armstrong. Just a man, a flawed man, as he said himself, saying yes to a bunch of questions everyone knew the answer to. A lot of people just wanted to hear it from him. Now that it’s over, while Cycling tries to rebuild from another disaster, Armstrong will slip back into the shadows and will always be remembered as the greatest individual cheater in the history of sports.