Next up on the essays shelf:
The Only Game in Town: Sportswriting from The New Yorker
The Only Game in Town is a collection of sports writing from The New Yorker. So far, I have excerpted from the following collections: Life Stories (profiles), The Fun of It (Talk of the Town pieces), and The New Gilded Age (financial writing), and Secret Ingredients (food writing).
Michael Specter wrote this adulatory profile of Lance Armstrong in 2002. Armstrong had already won the Tour de France a couple of times, and was at the height of his omnipresent fame. Michael Specter was an amateur cyclist, who was living in Europe with his family, and obsessed with the Tour de France (and Lance Armstrong’s achievements). Specter talked to Armstrong’s coaches, his whole team, the team doctor, and also went out cycling once with one of Armstrong’s coaches … just so he could see the vast difference between what Armstrong was able to do, and what the rest of humanity was capable of. The high passes in the Tour de France, the vertical climbs up the damn Alps, the superhuman strength and endurance it required … Specter was really into it all. He was a FAN. There are sentences in this Armstrong profile that will dog Michael Specter through the rest of his career.
But all you need to do is Google “Michael Specter Lance Armstrong” to see what has happened since. Specter has written on Armstrong every step of the way for The New Yorker. He probably felt like he HAD to, for professional reasons. His reputation is on the line. But that was true for a lot of members of the press when it came to Armstrong. You know, many bought the lies. But then, so many people did. There are so many quotes in this piece that predict the eventual outcome. Specter uses such quotes to bolster his own assessment of Lance – but they read very differently in light of all that has happened since. Armstrong has certainly seen this happen across the board: former supporters become his most vicious detractors, because they feel DUPED. It’s kind of like the critics of a certain cult which shall remain nameless. Once these people break free, and they start to realize how they have been conned, they become very dangerous to said Cult. They are the most vocal critics. They know that their own reputations are at stake, because they realize they have been duped, and so in defending themselves, they must try to bring the Cult down. One of the most famous critics of said Cult says over and over again to the leadership, “You make your own enemies.” So did Lance Armstrong.
It’s well worth it to read Specter’s columns on Armstrong in chronological order. You can see him throughout the process, as the facade crumbled, trying to deal with the revelations that were coming out. He makes no bones about the fact that this is personal. It’s personal because he’s a fan of the sport of cycling. It’s also personal because of this column I am excerpting today. Specter knows that he seems credulous and naive. His following columns (4 or 5 of them) are increasingly angry and increasingly damning.
I was never a Tour de France follower, and never cared for Lance Armstrong as a persona/role model (I hated his snotty Nike ad, but more on that in a bit) … but I really feel for my friends who are devoted to cycling as a sport, and who adore the Tour de France. It has been a horrible experience for them. I watched Armstrong’s Oprah interview, and felt that he was still lying. I did not buy at all his version of the conversation he had with his son. I think he’s a sociopath. He is a world-class Liar. I don’t trust one thing he says. Now back to that Nike ad.
The arrogance is breathtaking. This is not a surprise, considering all we know about Lance Armstrong. He denied the charges that he was doping for years. He used his cancer story as a front, and it was a great front. He used his charity work cynically and opportunistically, so that he could throw it back in the faces of his critics. “I came back from cancer … I have already experienced the worst … I am just a little bit stronger than everyone else, that’s all.” He has ruined lives. He has ruined other people’s careers. But like most Liars, he goes too far. He can’t seem to help himself. He got away with it for so long. He fooled everyone. Despite his hangdog expression in the Oprah interview, I think he loved that he got away with it for so long. I don’t think he felt bad for one second. He may feel bad NOW, but only because everyone hates him now. He said long ago at a press conference, early 2000s or something like that, “What, I’m gonna tell my son in 2012 that all of my Tour de France wins were a result of doping? No.” Again: that comment predicted what eventually went down. He said that originally to reiterate that he had character, that he was honest and true, that it mattered to him what his son thought of him, that he had scorn for the persistent rumors of drug use. THINK about that for a second. So no, I don’t buy that he had this heartfelt moment with his son, telling him not to brag about him any more at school. I think what really happened was much uglier, and far less noble. And to blatantly address those doping rumors in the way that he did in that Nike ad … well, the man has balls, I’ll say that. Knowing that so many people KNEW he was doping, that ad reads like a raised middle finger.
Michael Specter’s 2002 piece is so admiring that it contains the infamous sentence below: “After I watched Armstrong train and spent time with his coaches, the only way I could be convinced that he uses illegal drugs would be to see him inject them.” Michael Specter knows now that he was snowed. He knows now that his naivete colored his reaction to Armstrong (true for many many people, even those who understood the sport). Specter has become something akin to Armstrong’s worst nightmare in the years since. It’s a weird thing, reading this profile now. In one of his later pieces, he spoke to a cyclist who rode in the Tour de France who didn’t dope and that cyclist said that riding with everyone else (who clearly were doping) was like going the speed limit when everyone else is zooming by at 80 miles an hour. You can feel Specter’s dismay at what has been done to the sport he loves. I have felt the same thing about baseball and steroid use, so I relate on that score. If you love the game, you want it to be done right.
I admire Michael Specter’s admission of culpability, and also how he has conducted himself since. Yes, he was naive. But being a FAN of something is a good thing, a beautiful thing, and the Tour de France is a beloved athletic event. It has been soiled and spoiled, and Lance Armstrong will have to live with the fact that he took down the sport he loved so much and devoted so much time to. I don’t know what it’s like to be Lance Armstrong, but I think he’s a pretty shallow guy, emotionally, who only cares about winning, and who was willing to ruin other people’s lives in order to stay the White Knight of the sport. Totally reckless, when you understand how many people were “in” on it. But Armstrong was enough of a bully to not care. He would just go after his critics, many of whom were former friends, and destroy them.
Michael Specter’s process, of that veil being drawn back, to reveal the reality of Lance Armstrong’s lack of character, is fascinating. As Specter wrote in one of his more recent columns: “Hell hath no fury like a humiliated fanboy.”
Those of you out there who are cycling enthusiasts, Tour de France fans, Lance Armstrong fans/despisers, I look forward to hearing your perspective. I am purely an outsider.
Here’s a particularly embarrassing excerpt, one that Specter himself has said he cringes to read now.
The Only Game in Town: Sportswriting from The New Yorker
At the end of last year’s Tour, the French sports newspaper L’Équipe ran an article with the headline SHOULD WE BELIEVE IN ARMSTRONG?, suggesting it was time to consider the possibility that, since Armstrong has never been found guilty of doping, he may indeed be innocent.
After I watched Armstrong train and spent time with his coaches, the only way I could be convinced that he uses illegal drugs would be to see him inject them. After all, the doubts about him have always been a function of his excellence. Greg LeMond, America’s first Tour de France champion (he also won three times), put it well, if somewhat uncharitably, after Armstrong won the 2001 Tour: “If Lance is clean, it is the greatest comeback in the history of sport. If he isn’t, it would be the greatest fraud.” It is impossible to prove a negative, and so Armstrong can do nothing to dispel the doubts. But his frustration is clear; in 2000, he made a television ad for Nike in which he said, “Everybody wants to know what I’m on. What am I on? I’m on my bike, busting my ass six hours a day. What are you on?”
If the French don’t approve of Armstrong, it is not only – or even principally – because they suspect him of using drugs. They don’t believe that he suffers enough. French intellectuals love the agony displayed on the roads each July in the same way that American writers love to wail over the fate of the Red Sox. Thirty years ago, before much was known about sports nutrition, riders would finish the race – if they could – having lost twenty pounds, their eyes vacant even in victory. Armstrong represents a new kind of athlete. He has been at the forefront of a technological renaissance that has made European cycling purists uncomfortable. Referring to the gulf that now exists between the race and the racers, the French philosopher Robert Redeker has written, “The athletic type represented by Lance Armstrong, unlike Fausto Coppi or Jean Robic”– two cycling heroes from a generation ago– “is coming closer to Lara Croft, the virtually fabricated cyber heroine. Cycling is becoming a video game; the onetime ‘prisoners of the road’ have become virtual human beings … Robocop on wheels, someone no fan can relate to or identify with.”
“It’s so funny to hear people talk that way about Lance,” Craig Nichols, Armstrong’s oncologist, told me. “The fact is that no cyclist can have seen more pain than he has. The hard work and the inconvenience of the Tour just can’t scare him, because he has been through so much worse.”
Don’t tell me you’re sorry ’cause you’re not/Baby when I know you’re only sorry you got caught – the poet Rihanna
I don’t following cycling either, but this whole thing facinates me. It’s very personal for people because he had so many defenders in the media. Hell, he sued people who accused him of doping and he WON. I think there should be legal consequences for that. He dominated that sport so much that anyone who wasn’t on team Lance got chased right out of cycling. Why was this one man allowed to have so much power?
I saw some kind of special on TV about the scandal, and it traced the history of doping in cycling right back to the beginning of the sport. It has always been a problem. I wonder why some sports have huge problems with performance enhancing drugs, but others don’t.
Desirae – great Rihanna quote, exactly.
He said to Oprah in this weirdly detached way that the “story” (meaning: his life) was too good to be true. He led off with “cancer …” He always led off with that, then listed wife, kids … But the cancer seemed to be his ace in the hole. And no way would he have ever “come clean” except in the situation he was in where he was forced to.
I was so interested in his teammates who came out and came clean – yes, to save their own hides and show they were cooperating with the investigation – but many of them seemed actually relieved, to no longer be lying. Lance didn’t seem relieved. He seemed broken – but also still ACTING, in some way – pleading for our sympathy. Which, i get it … you’re a Lying Liar Who Lies, and I can’t stand it when I’m caught out in even a teensy lie, let alone a gigantic fraud.
I think too because his team was a federal agency – I am not sure, but there are more serious ramifications because of that. He wasn’t riding for Radio Shack or whatever, he was riding with a team sponsored by the US Government. I’m not really following the scandal too closely, but I know that every day there’s some new revelation. “Coming clean” was really irrelevant in terms of how much trouble Armstrong appears to be in.
One of the really interesting things in Specter’s piece was his analysis of the relationship between the team-mates (just in terms of their cycling) – and how many riders were willing to sacrifice their own glory in order to “set up” Lance to be the winner. In that situation, there’s just no way that you aren’t gonna do what Lance is doing – if you’re gonna ride with him, you have to do all the things he does just to keep up.
But as one of his teammates said on 60 Minutes – Lance obviously wasn’t the only one. Pretty much everyone was doing it. But I think it’s the blatancy of Lance’s lying about it and yes, his litigious nature – that helped destroy him (along with him being the biggest target). Because when people decided to speak up, they wanted to DESTROY him because he had hurt so many. There was that speech he made when he won the last Tour de France – at the finish line he said something like, “To the skeptics out there … I’m sorry you don’t believe in miracles.”
You know. It’s just outrageous.
Yeah, his confession has not had the effect he was clearly hoping for. People are not interested in forgiving him. I don’t think I have ever seen so much anger directed at one athelete before. And not just anger, but disgust – people are disgusted with him, they are disgusted with themselves for falling for his lies. He may have totally destroyed the reputation of his sport, as well. Can anyone watch the tour de france without thinking of this now? And he is just as smug and self serving as he always was – he isn’t really taking any personal responsibilty at all.
I watched the special with my Mom, who probably barely knows who Lance Armstrong is (her ability to remain ignorant of world events is practically a superpower). At one point she looked at the TV, where they were showing a clip of Armstrong at one of his press conferences, and said dismissively, “Thinks a bit much of himself, doesn’t he?”
// her ability to remain ignorant of world events is practically a superpower // Ha! I wish I had that superpower!!
I think your mom’s observation is exactly what bugged me about the Nike ad. And I had no investment in Armstrong at all – but the tone in that final section of the commercial … “What am I on?” It just turned me off. I thought, “Oh you’re just full of yourself. Fuck you.” I love athletes and I love champions, and I get why many of them are not humble. Because, duh, they ARE better than most everyone else at that one particular thing. But I guess I prefer them to be a little bit humbler than the snotty “I’m better than you” vibe in that commercial. At least ACT humble.
Just to compare: Michael Jordan’s Nike commercials were inclusive, and inspirational. Great ads for the brand, great ads for him personally as a persona, etc. Like this famous one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45mMioJ5szc
That is a hell of an ad. It makes you want to be better, that makes you want to keep trying, whatever it is. Lance Armstrong’s was self-serving and arrogant. I remember being turned off by it at the time.
and yes, Armstrong created an army of people who hate him, former supporters. Nothing more raging than a bunch of adults who realize they have been DUPED.
There was that moment when everything was crumbling when he posted a pic to Twitter of him lying around at home, surrounded by the 7 yellow Tour de France jerseys hanging on the wall. You know, even at the 11th hour, he wasn’t “getting it”. He’s so used to lying. I mean, obviously the man is an amazing athlete – but the lies, and how LONG he kept it up, and how sophisticated it was – and how many people were in on it …
What was it like for him? Did he ever have even a second of being afraid he would get caught? Or … did he believe his own press? I tend to think it’s the latter, but again, I’m not really a follower of LA so there may be stuff I am missing.
https://twitter.com/lancearmstrong/status/267364416864002048
That picture looks like something out of a David Lynch film. What a staggering lack of self awareness. Or he’s doing it on purpose to give everyone the finger.
At least when James Frey sat down with Oprah you could see that he was clearly terrified. There was flop sweat everywhere. But Armstrong seems to think that he’s too big to fail. Dude, so was the Titanic. And look what happened there.
Haha yeah, poor James Frey.
Lance Armstrong seemed like he was acting. He is calm cool motherfucker.
Tyler Hamilton’s 60 Minutes interview is a good comparison. He seemed chastened, dismayed, ashamed – very ashamed – but also relieved. Like it was a huge weight off his chest to finally tell the truth.
He seemed like a regular human being, with normal responses to things, in other words.
Lance Armstrong is hollow.
This is really fascinating to me because I was surprised a bit. I don’t follow sports at all, so none of the “he’s totally on Meth Laced Cheetah Plasma (tm Colbert)” rumors floated up to me until he got caught. I’m sickly fascinated by how big the lie is and how long he was able to get away with it especially as he was that sloppy about hiding it in the first place. There must be something in guys like this, that they honestly think they won’t get caught, or that it won’t matter if they do. His Oprah interview was interesting too for that reason, he seemed almost impatient, ready to skip through faking remorse and get to the comeback trail.
Jessica – Yes, I think he felt it didn’t matter if he got caught. And he was so wrapped up in his own false narrative (“I came back from cancer, I am amazing, everyone says so”) that he believed it.
But as the stories came out – and how he treated his teammates – and how you had to dope in order to ride with Lance, etc. – you realize that he was a criminal mastermind in many ways. Cold, calculating – he knew exactly what he was doing.
And yes, by going on Oprah, you saw how he hoped it would play out. We all love a “redemption narrative” – and Oprah is partly responsible for helping create that climate – and I think he thought that this would be Stage 1 of the Redemption Narrative of Lance Armstrong.
Clearly it didn’t work out that way. His troubles were just beginning.
I thought Oprah did an excellent job with the interview.
Imagine winning the Tour de France for the 6th or 7th time, can’t remember, and standing at the finish line, holding your son’s hand and your trophy and making a speech – to a bunch of people who KNEW you were doping – and saying, “To all the skeptics out there … sorry you don’t believe in miracles.”
You know, the guy was BEGGING to be brought down into a heap of rubble. He was BEGGING for it.
Even before the lie was exposed, I always wondered what an attractive woman like Sheryl Crow saw in this conceited bastard. I mean she had gone out with Eric Clapton, who always seems sincerely humble. If I remember correctly, Armstrong walked out on her while she was battling breast cancer. What a guy.
When Desirae says some sports have huge problem’s with PED’s and others don’t, I would say the reality is the sports who try to enforce the rules have the problems while others look away, as baseball did for 20 years. If you look around the NFL, there is no way all those guys are natural. But the league only half heartily enforces. And don’t be surprised if you hear soon about a scandal in Europe involving all those pro soccer players as well as tennis players of both sexes.
I really think the guy is a sociopath – and one of their defining characteristics is charm. They can be so awesome until you finally see underneath it. He fooled a lot of people. And yes, as a cancer survivor, he’s just so WONDERFUL to walk out on his girlfriend as she battles cancer herself. He’s just a terrible terrible man. I know Sheryl Crow was questioned about her time with Lance, but as far as I know whatever she said or saw has remained secret. But I know she was questioned.
I am glad he has been exposed. I can’t help but wonder: what is it like to be him? What does HE think about all of this? It’s got to be a morass of self-justification and rage. It can’t be anything else.
And Dg – good point about the sports who make it their business to enforce the rules. Lance Armstrong didn’t get a slap on the wrist. He was banned from the sport for LIFE. Do you think that that will impact the sport and help it recover?
I know the problem was widespread – but clearly not to the level that Lance was practicing it (meeting up with doctors in hotel rooms to get blood transfusions during the Tour, having guys on motorcycles wait by the phone for the call and then zip to the next stopping place and leave syringes in the team’s shoes, whatever – it was so organized, a giant criminal organization).
But do you think that other cyclists will see this as a deterrent?
Baseball sucked at enforcing it. Game of Shadows was a pretty good breakdown of the problem – Because I’m a baseball fan it was hard to read, it pissed me off … but it’s good to bring these issues out of the shadows into the light. The sport will be better for it.
Thanks everyone for all your great comments. It’s such an interesting topic.