generalspeaking

“I view this situation as one big lie that I repeated a lot of times.”

That’s the key line in Lance Armstrong’s interview with Oprah Winfrey. Unable to preserve his initial story—that he never doped—Armstrong is peddling a new story: He doped, he lied about not doping, and that’s all there is to it.

But that’s not all there is to it. The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency’s report on Armstrong, issued three months ago, details numerous incidents in which Armstrong, according to sworn witnesses, pressured, threatened, or intimidated others. Among them:

1. In 2002, according to Armstrong’s ex-teammate, Christian Vande Velde,

2. At the 2004 Tour de France, after cyclist Filippo Simeoni testified against Dr. Ferrari,

3. In 2005, after fellow riders Jonathan Vaughters and Frankie Andreu

4. According to Armstrong’s former teammate, Tyler Hamilton,

In his interview with Winfrey, Armstrong categorically denied that any riders had been pressured to dope: “The idea that anybody was forced or pressured or encouraged is not true.” When Winfrey asked Armstrong whether he had been the real boss of his team, he replied evasively: “Well, I was the top rider. I was the leader of the team. I wasn’t the manager, the general manager, the director.” He went on: “There was never a direct order, or a directive to say, ‘You have to do this if you want to do the Tour, if you want to be on the team.’ That never happened. It was a competitive time. We were all grown men. We all made our choices.”

Winfrey asked Armstrong about Vande Velde’s claim “that you threatened to kick him off the team if he didn’t shape up and conform to the doping program.” Armstrong shot back, “That’s not true.” Instead, Armstrong softened the story into a matter of setting the wrong example: “But even if I don’t say it, if I do it, and I’m the leader of the team, you’re leading by example, so that’s a problem.” With this maneuver—deflection disguised as contrition—Armstrong reduced the charge of coercion to a plea of doping. He pointed out “the difference between that and saying, ‘You have to do this if you want to do the Tour or stay on this team.’ … I view one of them as a verbal pressure, as a directive. And that didn’t exist.”

Armstrong couldn’t deny all the lawsuits he had filed and all the times he'd accused people of lying. So he attributed these intimidation tactics to fear, a rough childhood, and his cancer. He had vilified witnesses who told the truth because he saw them “as a friend turning on you.” He had attacked any threat because when he was a kid, his family “felt like we had our backs against the wall.” And, tragically, “my diagnosis … turned me into a person” who was resolved to “win at all costs,” since cancer compels you to “do anything I have to do to survive. … And I took that attitude, that ruthless and relentless and win-at-all costs attitude, and I took it right into cycling.”

That seems to be the game plan Armstrong brought to this interview. Downplay your power over others. Deny issuing explicit orders to dope. Convert any such story into a matter of setting a poor example.  Take responsibility for yourself, but suggest that others—those who claim you pressured them—must do the same. Recast your threats, retributions, and demands for silence as products of a hard life. Reduce your sins of coercion to a sin of deceit. When Winfrey asked Armstrong “what made you a bully,” he answered: “Just trying to perpetuate the story and hide the truth.”

That’s Armstrong’s message: Everything he did, no matter how domineering, menacing, or manipulative, was a desperate effort to protect a single lie. “I tried to control the narrative,” he says. And he’s still trying to control the narrative. Which is a good reason not to believe it.