Lance Armstrong, undeniably one of the world’s greatest athletes, has finally come clean and admitted that he relied on performance enhancing drugs all the years he competed in bicycling sports. Of course, he waited until the statute of limitations for perjury ran out – Armstrong gave a deposition under oath in which he repeatedly denied any doping.
New York Daily News sports columnist Mike Lupica does not believe any apologies Armstrong offers will be sincere. Lupica accuses Armstrong of being part of a ‘giant athletic Ponzi scheme.’
On Tuesday’s NBC Today show, Lupica said: “I believe that he's completely insincere except for this. He is starting to repair his own brand. People have overlooked the real story here — the lives that had to be destroyed to keep the lie going. To me this is like some giant, athletic Ponzi scheme that went on and on and built and built.''
As for Armstrong’s apology to the staff of his Livestrong cancer charity, Lupica said: “He will go to them and apologize because Lance once again thinks he is in control of this narrative. It's not like he's going to reveal any secrets here. As the lie built and built and built, people were unable to look at what a bully this guy was. This is about a gigantic lie that went on for 15 years.''
In his Daily News column Sunday, Lupica wrote: “Surely he will tell us that he did what he did because he was a cancer survivor trying to compete at the highest levels of a dirty sport. And that everybody else was doing it. And then he will tell us that he had to maintain the lie, his own version of the worldwide lie — I’m clean, they’re dirty — to prop up Livestrong, his foundation that raises money for cancer survivors. He needed the yellow jerseys from the Tour de France to sell all those Livestrong yellow bracelets. At the heart of this “confession” from Lance Armstrong will be that he had to do a lot of bad things for the greater good, all the while getting richer and more famous himself and shamefully attacking anyone who dared suggest that he was anything less than an icon and living saint.”
Armstrong’s supporters will accuse Lupica of taking cheap shots at their hero, but I happen to believe he is spot on. Armstrong achieved a milestone in sports history by winning seven grueling Tour de France races. It is conceivable that he could have won those races without doping, but he wasn’t going to take any chances. He lied about it all these years. Worst of all, Armstrong intimidated and threatened all witness to his doping. He attacked and publicly smeared his accusers, taking several of them to court.
There is not a shred of sincerity in Armstrong’s apologies. His confession is strictly self-serving. He has been banned from competing in sanctioned sports and he hopes that he will be reinstated by his confession of using performance enhancing drugs and lying about it for 15 years.
Now, having been stripped of his seven Tour de France titles and exposed by solid evidence of his doping, he wants to make everything alright by ‘fessing up and apologizing. Sorry, but that does not work for me. Armstrong is not a legendary sports hero, he’s a legendary liar.
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