Watching the program last night I viewed it almost as car-crash TV, we the audience knew the questions and had made up our opinions on Lance before the show aired. Did they change much in those first 90 minutes? I don’t think so.
What got me the most was watching his body language, and listening to the how of what he was saying rather than the actual words.
He has been living a lie for decades now, his whole life predicated on cheating and lying to the public – and what I saw was a man contemplating the enormity of his answers, trying to grasp the fallout of what he was saying.
I think that lie has been built up over and over by his own desire to win, by his absolute determination to win at ALL costs – regardless of the human damage left in his wake. Further encouraged by sponsors who would have been relentless in their desire to make money from him, seeing him as nothing more than a cash machine, with personal sponsorship deals worth 10’s of millions he was playing a very high-stakes game of bluff!
It was saddening to see many commercial breaks in the program, as corporate America hung on to his coat-tails one last time to milk some more money from him – I was left to wonder how much money was spent, and MADE, during this 90 minutes!
But Lance himself obviously comes across badly, many people on the in interwebs calling him evil, despicable, ruthless etc but I think I managed a modicum of sadness for him. He is obviously ill, probably suffering from some form of personality dis-order, and couple with that desire to win we see a very sad sight.
His glibness, his attempts at charm, his lack of specific knowledge about who he sued all pointed to someone so completely wrapped up and immersed in lie that he believed his own stories, highlighting to me a sociopathic tendency that seems pretty text-book.
Do I feel sorry for him? Heck no! Do I think he should punished? absolutely.
But I think that we are dealing with a very flawed human being here, his life story has been publicly eviscerated, and he is labelled a cheat before the whole world – I can’t help wonder the damage done to his kids by all this.
He should be punished, up to the extent of prison perhaps, for he didn’t just cheat, he perjured, he lied, he transported drugs across borders, he abused, he made a mockery of the justice system in multiple countries.
What will hurt him most I think would be a complete BAN on ALL competitive sport, regardless of whether its triathlon or cycling, if is under the jurisdiction of WADA or not – he simply should not be able to compete at any level. Ever.
