Armstrong interview takes Bertie route

IF he was so minded, Lance Armstrong could have looked to these shores for the model confession.

For those of you not up to speed, an interview with Armstrong, by Oprah Winfrey, was broadcast over the last two nights. In it, the seven-time winner of the Tour de France — titles of which he has since been stripped — provided a confession of sorts.

He admitted that he took performance-enhancing drugs through the seven tours that he won.

He admitted to being a bully, and an “arrogant prick“. Oprah asked him about his former masseuse, Irishwoman Emma O’Reilly. She had told about how she witnessed him conspiring to doctor a prescription in order to provide an excuse for taking drugs during a race in 1999. Armstrong sued her, tried to blacken her name within the sport, and made her life hell.

“She’s one of those people who I have to apologise to,” he said, as if his transgression was something that happened in a fleeting moment, rather than over the guts of 10 years.

“She’s one of the people who got run over, got bullied.”

It was a nice line. O’Reilly had “got run over, got bullied“. Who exactly did the bullying?

The second half of the interview was aired after this column went to bed, but there was enough from Friday’s instalment to get to grips with what Armstrong is about.

The disgraced cyclist was an icon in world sport. A Texan who possessed a fierce determination, initially unmatched by talent, was diagnosed with cancer in his mid-20s. It would have ended the career of a lesser man. It might well have ended his life. But instead, he fought it, beat it, and was back in the saddle within 18 months of going through the life-sapping treatment. Thereafter, he won the Tour seven times, became a multi-millionaire, and generated a following among millions for his courage.

Off the road, he set up his cancer charity vehicle, Livestrong, which raised millions on the back of his celebrity, and undoubtedly comforted thousands who benefited from it.

Many sporting stars attract hero worship. Armstrong’s life-story, and his subsequent dedication to cancer research, saw him raised on a far higher pedestal. He was venerated as a cross between secular saint and superhuman athlete.

That was the narrative that the man himself would have liked to define his life. Behind the façade, it has belatedly emerged, he was a cheat of monumental proportions, and possessed of a character that thrived on bullying and denigration of those at odds with him.

After Armstrong’s first tour victory in 1999, former cycling great Greg Le Mond said of him: “If Lance is clean, it is the greatest comeback in the history of sport. If he isn’t, it would be the greatest fraud.”

If it wasn’t for the dogged persistence of two Irish journalists — David Walsh and Paul Kimmage — it’s quite possible Armstrong would not have been unmasked and his legend could have sailed off into immortality. (Walsh’s book about his pursuit, Seven Deadly Sins, is a cracking read.)

Last November, the US anti-drugs agency USADA published a report finally unmasking the fraud, and the Oprah interview is his stab at rehabilitation.

But is it a genuine confession, is he really contrite, or an attempt to stave off financial ruin, and attempt to have his lifetime ban reduced?

If he was looking for a particular model of confession to suit his needs, he could have cast an eye across the Atlantic. (Lance, baby, Skibbereen is keeping an eye on you).

The two models might best be described as Ben and Bertie respectively. The first one was fashioned by Ben Dunne after his little contretemps in Florida in 1992. That concerned an incident in which Ben was found to be out of his box on cocaine in a hotel room with a woman who wasn’t his wife. The situation developed to a point where Ben was arrested, and charged with possession of enough coke to floor a horse. Word seeped back home and scandal erupted.

He decided to meet scandal head on with a confessional interview that was broadcast live and won over a nation. He came clean. He had sinned. He was a human being appealing to the better nature of his family, the Irish people and God. And win he did. His adviser on that occasion was, notably, not a PR professional, but his solicitor Noel Smyth. The strategy has been textbook reading for anybody studying the dark art thereafter.

The Bertie model was fashioned from a different school altogether. That happened in September 2006 when word seeped out of the Planning Tribunal that Bertie had been a naughty boy.

Information that he had been in receipt of large sums of cash back in the 1990s could have had devastating consequences for his political career, not to mention legacy.

He met the challenge head on, organising a live interview for RTÉ’s Six One News, broadcast from his stronghold of St Luke’s in Drumcondra. The interview went down in history.

Bertie told how it was all associated with his marriage, how his friends gave him loans to tide him over during a difficult time in the break-up. How all he was concerned about at the time was the education of his two young daughters. At that point, tears came to the man’s eyes and a nation melted.

Afterwards, the opinion polls declared the interview a major success. Like Ben, Bertie appealed to the better nature of the Irish people, asked that his human frailties be forgiven, and who could refuse him that?

Nitpickers saw some major flaws in the substance of his confession, but the broad swathe of Irish people accepted his tear stained story. Of course subsequent investigations into his finances showed that much of the confession was codswallop, but that didn’t emerge until the far side of a general election, in which he won office for a record third term.

Armstrong, it would appear, has gone for the Bertie model. His confession was largely directed at the great swathes who are not completely au fait with the extent of his cheating and lying. His shot at redemption appears to be geared towards getting the ban reduced so that he can begin earning in the saddle as soon as possible. He doesn’t have the cut of a man who genuinely regrets not just how he lied and bullied his way to iconic status, but dragged cycling into the gutter as he did so.

He could have donned the sackcloth and ashes, offered to tell all he knew about the extent of corruption within the sport, pledged to dedicate the rest of his life to fighting drugs, taken whatever legal redress he is liable for. Instead, he did a Bertie on it.

He appealed to the better nature of viewers, while hoarding the deeper truths that tell the real tale. It would appear that the long and sad fall from his pedestal has some way to go yet, but don’t bet that Armstrong will ever be fully contrite. Sometimes the deeper truths are just too awful to contemplate for those who have lived too long by a lie.