JOHN RIORDAN: A statue pulled off his pedestal

The day after part one of the highly-anticipated Lance Armstrong interview on the Oprah Winfrey Network was always going to be about those he crushed along the way.

Emma O’Reilly who he can’t remember suing. Betsy Andreu who he says he didn’t call fat. The US reporters and columnists who were the subject of odd rants like “I can get into your emails, I can get into your phones, I know what you’re doing at all times”.

All of them, David Epstein of Sports Illustrated, the author Daniel Coyle and a handful of others, were unanimous in their praise of David Walsh but angered by what they saw as a wholly unsatisfactory response from the disgraced cyclist.