Lance Armstrong, The Seven Deadly Sins Complete Interview With David Walsh

you continue with the work that you want to do to try and find out the truth about Lance on or at least portray that to the general public and for people to realize who he is he goes on to win seven tours de France he retires he makes a comeback he becomes so powerful and so big there must have been a point where you start to think is you know is this person too big too powerful with too much money to ever beat up with almost yes I I have to say I always felt he was too big to be toppled if you said to me did you see the end coming as it came no I didn't I absolutely didn't because in 2001 I found out that he was working with Mikkel a Ferrari doping doctor should that have not made a big difference it should did it no Lance said I believe mikkel is an honest man and a lot of the journalists said well that's okay then Lance believes he's honest well we've dear old Lance believes he's honest did what David Wilde said is interesting but not that relevant so I come up with Emma O'Reilly I was and she says I was Lance's masseuse it was doping in the team and I put that in a book with Pierre Ballester and people say you know what mrl is just one witness may be a bitter ex ex-employee and then I go to Betsy Andreu she heard him admit using doping oh she's a bitter wife of the teammates and Lance had a way of diminishing all the people who spoke against them and I supposed a bitter really frustrated me was the readiness of so many to accept Armstrong's totally implausible explanations to accept the fact that he felt he could carry to assassinate anybody who spoke against him and I found out depressing it was like if you were a big guy you could say whatever you like about other people and the journalists who should have been challenging you didn't challenge you and were prepared to let you get away petition 13 years obviously is a long time to pursue one personal most or one subject do you feel like it's closed now for you yeah I think it is pretty much closed and and people you know because I was on this case for a long time I feel I've got exaggerated credit for it really I mean if you want to know how Lance Armstrong was down you need to look at land songster I'm not David watch because although Lance was a smart guy I think his smartness was more the analytical type of intelligence I don't think he was emotionally intelligent he didn't realize that floyd landis would constitute a very dangerous enemy so when floyd landis got banned after a 2006 Tour de France and came back and his looking is reaching out to Lance for some help and Lance's basically get lost you're a loser you're caught Lance made an enemy of a guy who was incredibly dangerous because Floyd is tough he's hard and when he takes his gloves off he's a he's a formidable fighter so Floyd took the gloves off wrote about what life was like in the US Postal team and because maybe people like me had created a lot of doubt about Lance Armstrong then you had people like Travis Tygart the United States anti-doping agency CEO you people like Jeff Novitzky who was conducting an investigation into doping in cycling they were listening to Floyd because in a way maybe what I had done had created enough doubt for Floyd's allegations to have a huge amount of credibility but Floyd's allegations were at the turning point in this story and from that normally dawn we had entered the end game and it was going to end very good for the truth and very badly for Lance Armstrong do you think that had he not come out of retirement back in 2009 that's you know we might not be sat here talking about the same subject because things might have come out totally if he hadn't read if he hadn't made it made his comeback in 2009 there is no way in the world that he would have been caught in my eyes and but it's like you know we've all watched the Hollywood movies right the guy who's been the greatest bank thief in the history of robbing banks and he's accumulated a lot of money and he goes into retirement and he's living a nice sedate life and somebody comes along and says you know there's one last job that you should consider doing and for Lance Armstrong coming back in 2009 was that one last job couldn't resist it I believe he did it for the money that I think he felt he needed some extra money before finally going into charmant but he was lured by that one last job wouldn't last adventure and it's it's you know the history of Hollywood is lizard with movies that have bored us every guy's coming out of retirement from one last job and Lance was just you know I know the Rose actually Chandra I've already touched briefly on your legendary interview with Lance Armstrong back in 2001 of that hotel could you just expand on on that a little bit more for us yeah the 2001 interview with Lance was actually a funny almost but it's only funny in hindsight at the time I didn't think was funny because then as I wrote it wrote a line in the book which is you know I was high on the ecstasy of sanctimony you know Philip Roth line and I was going there all sanctimonious asking Lance all these doping questions and talk about you know questions being his with the dead bat I would say to Lance and Lance what do you know about cycling history and doping and he'd say not very much and I'd say well you surely heard the name Tom Simpson and he said yeah yeah yeah kind of vaguely you know I said well Tom Simpson died on Marv on two you know in in controversial circumstances and I hadn't that sentence uttered and Lance jumped in and said but he never tested positive and I thought hold on here now it was amphetamines found in tongue Simpsons pocket was amphetamines found in his bloodstream it was and fishermen found in his suitcase back at the hotel but Lance says he never tested positive now why would Lance say that and it was absolutely clear to me Lance said that because as long as you didn't test positive nobody could prove you used drugs and that was going to be the mantra that would govern his entire cycling life I passed the tests you believe me you have no right to ask questions beyond that obviously I came from a different place but the interview that day in in the in eastern France was was was almost ridiculous because I was asking questions which I thought were perfectly normal and Lance was giving me ridiculous answers but there weren't answers that proved he doped for example I would say well your best friend at the time Kevin Livingstone he is part of a criminal investigator in Italy with the Kelly Ferrari have you discussed this with Kevin and Lance would look at me and say no actually haven't discussed it I said he's your best friend you share rooms with him you go out six hour training rides with him he's involved in a criminal investigation and you haven't said hey keV what's all this about you and Ferrari you've never said that no no I've never said that he says there's lots of things we don't talk about and I mean it was just ridiculous I mean as I said it wasn't proof that he doped but it sure was proof that he could lie because pretty much every answer he gave me I felt was a lie you know he was telling me that I know nothing about doping basically that was for two hours maybe an hour and a half an interview and I kind of I banged my head I banged my head off the stone wall and at the end of it all I had was a sore head you know because I didn't you know I didn't get any obviously from him at all I maybe I went away with a sense of you know what you're gonna have to keep digging here because this guy isn't going to give up anything voluntarily can you ever see Lance Armstrong give me a kind of frost/nixon interview and admitting all that he's done over the years lots of people wondering about whether Lance is going to do a tell-all interview you know turn up on Oprah Winfrey or wherever you know Letterman or Jay Leno you know and do his tell-all interview I feel he has to do that to kind of rebuild his life because he's in a really bad place now but the kind of practical difficulties God is that once he admits that he did dope well then the people are going after him to get money back that they paid to him ACA insurance company Sunday Times newspaper US Postal all their sponsorship if he admits he doped those cases are all immediately lost he then has no defense so I believe his lawyers are telling him now sit tight Lance you cannot do that tell-all interview but his life remains in a kind of a purgatory you know that you know telling all might be held for a certain amount of time but it gives him a chance to kind of start climbing upwards out of there and where he is now he's stuck and I hope that he's he's getting his financial stuff dealt with and he's going to do the tell-all interview and admit to all the sins of the past because until he does that I don't think he is any kind of future worth having I'm not going to ask you to name a top five villains but you know five people that stick out in your head you know immediately right now who've done the most to damage our sport in the last 13 years since Lance first one is tall well wouldn't the things that people will say about Lance's come on you mean don't tell me that he was any worse than than yeah no ill recur even basil or Contador even who tested positive and you know basically all those top guys were doing something so therefore they're all equal in terms of villainy but I don't agree with that and I think Lance was a particular case I think he saw doping as an opportunity he embraced that opportunity and he decided if if our doping program was better than everybody else's we would have such an advantage because doping is such a big influence on competition so I think Lance seized the opportunity of doping to make himself the most successful hit cyclist in the history of the Tour de France fraudulent of course and that would be taken away but at the time that he left in 2005 he's a seven-time Tour winner as we've said earlier if he didn't come back he still the seven-time Tour winner so I think Lance would have to be the number one villain in my eyes and I don't want to categorize him that but I don't think there was anybody more cynical I think what Lance did to mo Reilly was despicable beyond belief and and everything he's got in terms of the consequences of his doping being discovered he deserves people say oh I feel sorry for him for this reason I feel sorry for the film for that reason I say if you feel sorry for him you weren't listening when he discussed mo Riley at the Discovery Place press conference in 2004 you weren't listening when he discussed mo Reilly in November 2005 at the SCA case under oath so everything bad that's happened to him since in my view he deserves I always had a particular disliking I have to say for Johan Bruyneel I just thought if you could put cynicism into human form you've got your own bro Neal I think he had an attitude to doping that was wretched I mean again that old cycling thing of doping is our business it's not your business don't even dare ask we do whatever we like and you have no right to know psyche was never going to you know recover as long as people like Johan Bruyneel were involved so I look forward to him not being involved in words like me a guy who's come out of this relatively unscathed has been jimick Ovitz I think J Malkovich knew precisely what was going along I think he was a plausible guy I think people believed him and I think he's another guy who under on the barometer of cynicism would be up there an eight or a nine out of ten it's been a lot of courageous people over the last 13 years we've stuck their hand up when maybe they they could have just kept quiet who in your view of the five was again immediately come into your head there's people that have really helped the sport change for the better well and I'm I'm biased here in that I had witnesses and people who sources who came and helped me do what I wanted to do it in terms of bringing out the truth in this so Betsy Andreu and M O'Reilly would be right up there to women who didn't mind telling the truth at a time when the only reward for telling the truth was vilification and bullying a lot of people have told the truth since all the us posted riders have come out but they did so under pressure and Betsy and Emma told the truth when when the only pressure on them was not to tell the truth was for everybody would have said to me you'll just bring the wrath of Armstrong down upon you if you tell the truth Betsy and rayon frankly and rail you know they're Frankie's Frankie's professional life was seriously damaged by his wife's determination not to lie for Lance Armstrong mo Riley at the time that LA Confidential came out the book that Pierre Ballester and I wrote I've never seen Emma on the edge at any other time except that time she was under so much pressure and she felt it she thought she was going to lose everything why because she told the truth Armstrong story now MN Betsy would be right up there Stephen Swart would be totally up there this is a guy who rode with Lance and Motorola team he had a young son was getting really into cycling and eight years after he retired Stephen said you know what I want to tell the truth about how it wasn't that Motorola team and we decided in 1995 to dope the biggest advocate of doping and our team was Lance Armstrong but I Stephen smart also doped he was vilified for that in New Zealand all these silly you know radio phoning shows loads of guys coming on saying what a loser well you know how dare he impugn the reputation of Lance Armstrong and Steven sport was named New Zealander of the year for telling the truth in the Lance Armstrong story same story at one point in his life he gets vilified at another point the same story earns him the accolade of New Zealander of the year and I do admire New Zealand for making a truth-teller their New Zealand rose a year I think that's a really positive thing and of all the things that have happened since the truth has come out Swartz the recognition with Stephen Swart is right up to I think Greg LeMond has done a great job but people like Paul Kimmage and Christophe pass all the guys who were you know regarded as you know lowly riders almost losers because they said we believe that you can't achieve in this sport without doping and lots of people suffered like like like Christophe passing like Paul Kimmage like Lucille DeLeon but they were the guys who came out and said it I mean it's okay to suffer silently as many people did but that didn't help the sport you needed to actually come out and say this is wrong this is this is unfair this is totally unjust and that's what I saw and Kimi DeLeon did and those guys would be high up on my list of those I would most admire mentioned very briefly Greg LeMond who is now the only American winner of the Tour de France tell us how he kind of came into your life in terms of your investigations well before he came into my life in terms of the investigations just said one thing about him I went on the 1986 tour where he got into a battle with with his teammate Bernard Ino and I was the greatest Tour de France I've ever seen that was an extraordinary race and Greg LeMond was by some distance the most talented bike racer I've ever seen I've never seen anybody just look so natural on a bike he Greg even in the middle of a Tour de France when he made an attack or when he reacted to an attack he looked like he was just on a fun ride and I and he had the most extraordinary physiological capacities and the most beautiful shape on the bike I app I love the way he rode the bike and he came into my world because after I brought the stuff out about Lance working with Mikkel Ferrari you know Armstrong Armstrong basically said Micheli is an honest man I don't apologize for working with him and I rang up Greg two weeks after the story came out and I said Greg what do you make of this and he said well when Lance when when Lance won his first Tour de France I cried he said I was so happy and I totally believed this was a great thing for cycling he said but now that I've learned he's working with Ferrari I have to change my view because I know Ferrari is the dirtiest doctor in doping I know that from my experience and he said Lance should not be with him and we talked about it and then Greg produced what was in many ways the quotation that would define the whole debate at that time he said you know if Lance's story is true it's the greatest comeback in the history of sport if it's not it's the greatest fraud and of course that was just raising the question that it might be a fraud Arthur of course went insane with anger and Greg Dan was vilified by Armstrong you know Greg was unbelievable pressure put on him he lost his bike business I mean Armstrong could exercise unbelievable influence if he wanted to to do you down or damage your business interests or destroy your character you know he was he was a formidable and very dangerous enemy Lance and he didn't mind using his power to destroy other people and they as you just mentioned Greg probably a lot of people had a lot to lose in terms of business foot for speaking up about Lance Armstrong he's come recently and since the Lance has been found out as it were he's almost put himself forward for UCI presidency so to oversee the sport in the International Gay but is that something that you could see him do either temporarily or long-term is he the right person for that I think he could do it on an interim basis but I don't think Gregor's you know got the kind of personality carried her to be president of UCI I think that would tie him down in a way he wouldn't enjoy being tied down I mean Gregg does lots of things he's lots of different interests and he definitely wants to help cycling and that's why he said he'd be prepared to put himself forward on an interim basis and but cycling needs somebody who would be able to devote a huge amount of time to creating a new form of leadership and I'm not sure who it will be but what we are sure about what everybody is sure about is that cycling needs new leadership it needs people that can do the job and be credible it could be argued that the fight against doping in all sports is futile because there's so many different people with interests they've got the athletes that want to make money from the sport the governing body doesn't want that the sports coming to disrepute the media wants to get as easier a story as possible and that means being friends with the athletes is you only don't have that view but how is that going to be resolved people say you've got so much doping in sport and it's so difficult to eradicate I mean and sport really has tried I would say not hard enough but it has tried and it's failed miserably to eradicate doping so why not just accept that it's it's there it's it's part of sport now just get on with it well the reason why we can never do that is is is put yourself in the mindset of you being a father to a gifted athlete and you've brought him up to say that the truth is important and to believe in the truth you've brought him up not chief and then the he calls you up maybe you know he's brought up in London or he's brought up in Manchester and then he goes to France and he rings you up and he says dad you know I now realized that I can't achieve what I want to achieve in cycling unless I dope because pretty much all my rivals all my big rivals are doping what do you say to him I believe you say to him son I'm sorry you've got to come home you can't do this because you'll be building whatever success you might achieve on a lie see everybody that says well look doping is there doping exists let's not get obsessed about it and fight it fight a battle that maybe we're never going to win those people they tend to be people who are looking at it from the point of view I'm a spectator I'm sitting on my couch I love records I love great performances and I'm not that concerned well my argument always was you'd be damn concerned if it was your son who faced a dilemma and you'd say how horrible it is that he had to come in that crossroads in his life where the only way to progress was to Chief's it's just not acceptable should never be acceptable and we should we should fight in more imaginative ways than ever and we should never give up the fight I was a big gap in the record books now seven years of tours de France which haven't got a winner and then we can save you say that most people don't see Lance Armstrong as a champion anymore but in your view who is the best ever cyclist now and I would say mercs for sure you know the amount of races he won the fact that he could win the one-day classics he could win the shorter as he could win the Grand Tours just he could sprint he could time trial he could do the lot to cannibal they called him because he just devoured the opposition and he's definitely the greatest cyclist and Bradley Wiggins has done extremely well to win the Tour de France win an Olympic gold medal I mean in the same year it's a fantastic achievement he want plenty of other races this year as well but in the kind of pantheon of great cyclists I mean Bradley doesn't get near really they you know if if I'm thinking of the Tour de France winners that I would regard us and truly great I'm thinking of I'm thinking of mercs I'm thinking of Jack ankertill I'm thinking of Greg LeMond and they're the kind of people I'm thinking of and generally I would I would be going for people who came before EPO because that was there there was always drugs in cycling but when EPO came it really did changed the territory and it meant that people who should never could never win the Tour de France without it would win it something that alarm bells ringing for you is not just lances dominance but also that of his team US Postal team sky seemed to be very dominant this year something that also worries u-tube sky have been so good that people almost saying Dave Brentford himself makes this point you know the more success we achieved the more suspicious we look and that's true because that's what that's what cycling is now and I really want to believe they're clean I believe that what Dave Brailsford did on the track was done without drugs I think they've been sensationally kind of successful we saw that in Beijing we've seen that in London 2012 I think Brailsford has applied a lot of the principles that he used with the track team and he's adapted them to Road Cycling with tremendous success I think sky had the biggest budget so I think it's natural that they will get the best riders Jonathan Vaughters who had and Bradley Wiggins on the Garmin team he said to me if Bradley Wiggins had stayed with us we would have won the Tour de France with him now I believe the Garmin team are clean so a simple question to self if you believe that Bradley Wiggins would have won the Tour clean with Garmin why can't you believe that Bradley Wiggins won the Tour clean with Sky well I do believe he wanted clean with Sky because I believe that the race in which he finished fourth for Garmin was a tougher race than last year's race and I think Bradley won a good race but it wasn't an especially difficult Tour de France I mean if Contador is back in 2013 and if if we have Chris Froome a year old or a year stronger it's going to be a tougher race for for Bradley Wiggins to win and my feeling is to is to say that Sky teams guy are clean but that doesn't mean we stop watching and stop watching closely

Channel: Global Cycling Network

Views: 292,235

Rating: 4.7131062 out of 5

Keywords: Greg Lemond, oprah, Global Cycling Network, Cyclist, 17th january, tour de france, lance, USPS, tdf, Lemond, winfrey, riding, le tour, doping, armstrong, Cycling, pro cycling, Betsy Andreu, Road Bike, Sec Interview, interview, january 2013, GCN, Bike, Bicycle, Sports, doping scandal, Lance Armstrong, dope

Id: bkARvYIwT8E

Length: 24min 11sec (1451 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 21 2013