The disgraced cyclist has admitted to Oprah that he doped. Alex Massie, who saw this confession coming, recently dubbed Armstrong “the greatest cheat in the history of sport”:
[C]ancer became a carapace protecting Armstrong from the slings and arrows of outrageous criticism. Never mind the sport, face up to the fact he inspired so much hope. Maybe so. But the sorry truth is that cancer proved useful to Lance Armstrong. It didn’t just reshape his body and equip him with a startling measure of mental fortitude, it also made his critics wonder if they – I suppose I mean, we – were heels, scoffing sourly at the greatest inspiration of the age. What kind of person reacts to such a noble prospect by wishing to destroy it?
A wise one, as it turns out. Pace Christopher Hitchens, just as it suited Mother Theresa to keep her people poor, so it suited Armstrong to swaddle himself in the community of cancer sufferers. They were his human shields.
TNC piles on:
I’m not sure what I think about drugging when everyone else around you is drugging. I don’t think lying is a very good idea. I think trying to destroy people for telling the truth is a good deal worse. It’s that all-out war that really sets Armstrong apart. This isn’t just a “doping scandal.” It’s something much creepier.
Michael Specter spells out why Armstrong came clean:
Lance wants to compete in triathlons and other sporting events and U.S.A.D.A. wont let him—unless he owns up to what he did. That’s his reason. He wants to get back on the bike. But he will only race again (and probably not for years, in any case) if he names names, implicates colleagues, coaches, friends—many of the very people he threated to destroy if they ever revealed the truth about him.
Despite having been spectacularly wrong about Lance in the past, I will make one more prediction: Lance will talk and talk and talk. After all, he wants something for himself, and what else matters to him?
The Dish 