Ha ha! Lance doesn't even deny doping anymore. He simply denies having gained an "unfair advantage," ie everyone was doping along with him:
Sometimes it’s the stuff they don’t say that rings loudest.
Lance Armstrong has always said he won his seven Tours as a squeaky clean athlete. He claimed he did not use cheater gambits like red blood cell transfusion, EPO, human growth hormone, testosterone, steroids, or any of the banned performance enhancing drugs rife in professional cycling. Armstrong also said he was tested more than any other athlete in the world — more than 500 times. (Maybe not: There has never been any independent verification of Armstrong’s “500 times” tested claim. The source of that unrealistic number — once a week for 10 years? Really? — was always Armstrong, just Armstrong.)
Yesterday, Armstrong didn’t say any of that. No claims that he never doped. No claims of being the most tested athlete in history.
Armstrong used different words yesterday. He said he used no “unfair advantage” during his career.
Wow — huge shift, that. Armstrong knew the hammer was about to fall on him hard. If he had chosen to arbitrate the charges against him put forward by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, the evidence against him would have come out. The strongest of that evidence is the eyewitness testimony from more than 10 ex-teammates and employees.
Let’s pause. Some will protest that eyewitness testimony is hearsay, vendetta, not real evidence. Sorry, it is hard evidence when it is given under oath. Eyewitness testimony under oath is enough to convict someone of murder. The ******* Jerry Sandusky is in prison because of eyewitness testimony, not DNA or other “facts.” Let us remember that false testimony is called perjury, a felony. Jail time. Most people won’t perjure themselves for a vendetta. Do you seriously believe that 10 people who worked closely with Armstrong would perjure themselves and risk jail out of mere jealousy towards Armstrong? That is Armstrong’s claim, but it makes no sense.
Armstrong was going down hard and he knew it. He quit his fight with the USADA to keep the evidence — that testimony from ex-teammates and employees — from seeing the light of day. More on this in a minute.
In claiming he had no “unfair advantage” Armstrong has opened the door, a wee bit, to a full doping admission. Yes, Armstrong doped. Everyone with an IQ higher than a tomato knows it. Moreover, Armstrong knows that everyone knows. He is therefore, starting yesterday, laying down the foundation for a new narrative that he hopes will cast him in a positive light. It goes like this: Yes I doped. But they all doped. Fact is, I still worked harder and smarter than any pro cyclist. I won on a level playing field.
If that was the sum of Armstrong’s doping confession — I doped, but so did everyone; I won on a level playing field — he might have a point. Armstrong didn’t start the age of super bio doping — mostly this is blood boosting that gives cyclists a 5% to 7% performance edge in mountain climbs, but it is also human growth hormone, artificial testosterone and the like. This bad stuff started in the early 1990s. It was not Armstrong’s fault that his peak years as an athlete coincided with cycling’s peak doping years. Bad luck for him.
That creates some sympathy for Armstrong’s doping. He knows it — Armstrong is extremely savvy about marketing and PR — and he is trying to prepare his fans for larger confessions with his “no unfair advantage” comment.
Here I think of the movie, The Sting. Paul Newman and Robert Redford were the good guys. Why? They cheated the cheater. Beat him at his own game. Armstrong, with Thursday’s statement, is positioning his fans to believe that he only cheated the cheaters — the rotten Germans, Italians, Spaniards, whatever. Armstrong thus becomes a bad-ass American folk hero, a Robin Hood in stars and stripes, if you like.
Will this ploy work? It might if that is the whole story. But the story does not end there. It’s a fact that Armstrong donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the anti-doping efforts of cycling’s governing body, the Union Cycliste Internationale, during his pro years. Armstrong was the only cyclist to do so. He’s the only pro athlete of any sport to donate money to a regulating body. The conflict of interest is both stunning and appalling. It begs discussion at least.
