A Lance Armstrong primer: 5 reads on the issue in sport this week.
From last August, a long read by Lance Armstrong’s former personal assistant, Mike Anderson in Outside. A devastating and personal takedown of a once lauded man.
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Drew Magary is one of my favourite sportswriters, writing for Deadspin and GQ among others. This passage from a piece in October last year on Nike dumping Lance Armstrong demonstrates why… I’m not gonna bother defending Lance Armstrong because Lance Armstrong is, by all accounts, a complete prick who probably could have gotten away with it if he hadn’t been such a complete prick to everyone. But seriously, fuck Nike. Real fucking brave of Nike to dump a retired athlete well after they’d squeezed every last useful promotional drop out of him, in his doping prime.
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Also from last October, this piece from Brian Phillips on Grantland, which I love for a number of reasons, one of which is lines such as… Lance Armstrong is a liar, and a fraud, and an inspiration to millions of people, and one of the trees outside my window has leaves that are almost purple, and it’s almost the end of October, and sports keeps rolling on. The TV guys are yelling about something else. Soon it will be Christmas. I have no idea how Lance Armstrong will be remembered.
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A Christian Brother’s education has made me a sucker for any article that opens with a quote from the Book of Daniel and contains a passage like this… I don’t really blame those who wanted to believe. It was a hell of a story. Albeit one told by perhaps the greatest cheat in the history of professional sport. Certainly the most sanctimonious. How many others have offered themselves as a kind of redemptive Jesus? But this Jesus was just Barabbas in a Yellow Jersey.
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And finally, Buzz Bissinger, author of Friday Night Lights offers up a mea culpa on last year’s Newsweek headline “I Still Believe in Lance Armstrong.”
Whatever he says, subtract by a thousand, divide by two, then three, then multiply the whole sum of bullshit by zero.
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… and if you haven’t already – read this by Jonathan Horn in The Age.
About Craig Little
My heroes are all dead white males, mostly because that seems really attainable for me.
From the Grantland piece
“In any given Lance Armstrong discussion, doesn’t it always feel like something is missing — like you’re only seeing six sides of a seven-sided polygon, and you can’t tell where the seventh side is?”
Spot on.
So there is no Santa and no Lance Armstrong either.
I think Jonathan Horn sums it up well. A bit of perspective is required.
Litza, this will be an invaluable asset through the year. Great idea.
Re Armstrong, I find the hype about the so-called ‘confession’ perplexing. What will it really change? Like most things the man does, it will just be another calculated act. ‘Redemption’ can be genuine, or it can just be bullshit.
Great stuff Litza.
I thought J Horn’s piece in yesterday’s Age was an excellent read.
Along with the Spooner cartoon.
Great idea, Litz, to bring these pieces to our attention.
I can’t work out why Armstrong would bother speaking out about his misdemeanours.
Why does he have to resurrect his image? To what purpose?
Martin Flanagan once wrote that perhaps the main plank to our fascination with Gary Ablett snr was his mystery.
Gaz never spoke in the media. None of us knew much about him.
Armstrong should get mysterious.
Daff
For those with even a passing interest/knowledge I’d have thought any apology would be a few years late and several million dollars short.
The only people’s whose opinions he could perhaps influence were those with little to no knowledge on the sport and his history in it – hence the choice of Oprah.
Personally, I’d have loved to have seen Armstrong sit down with David Walsh (his book ‘Seven Deadly Sins: My Pursuit of Lance Armstrong’ is a great read) and not only come clean on his own cheating, but also tear down the entire industry that was created for not just Armstrong, but many others, to cheat their way to millions of dollars. He needed to name names.
Gary Ablett Snr is an interesting one. I suspect that most are relieved he remains a mystery. When it comes to sport, we want to believe the myth (ref: Armstrong, Lance).
The thing with Oprah was a puff piece. It had nothing to do with repentance, regret and sorrow. The guy was there doing damage control. And how the #### could she let him away with a line like “Everyone was doing it.” She should have jumped all over him for that. The guy is a turd. He cost an honest sportmens theior rightful place on top of the podium. Oprah should have hammered him for that but she didn’t. For shame.