I wondered about the timing myself. These seems like the most likely potential reasons.
1. Every bows to Oprah's schedule. :)
2. He is working for a deal to testify against some big sports officials. Kind of a you took me down, now I am bring you all with me type of thing. Maybe why wouldn't name names.
3. Something big is coming down the pipe and he wants to get out in front of it.

Now he can claim to be this great organizer - "I am a cheat - but the best cheat"

In cycling, that at least appears to be mostly true. I mean one of the years of the tour de france the top 17 places all have now at least had serious rumors of doping. So it seems like it is a level playing field.

I saw you have leagues. Non-doping, mild doping, heavy doping, etc. FOr the records, maybe they should be divided into the doping times.

I view doping as a technology. Like what can be done to an engine in auto-racing. It should be treated similarly.

Those of us who never enjoyed pro sports while growing up in postwar America are enjoying these years very much. All the super-successful sports 'heroes' from back in the day are now entirely unremarkable old people... Only most of them are bitter (which I enjoy) and boring (which I had foreseen; these people never learned to talk or think or interact when they were young, because they didn't have to).

So I enjoy the discomfiture of the Welches of the world who have to go through these arguments about what drugs should mean as we appraise these talents, because these idiots were never all that special anyway. And some of us knew it at the time, and had the good sense to be appalled as sports teams raped our state capitals for arena space.

Fuck your record books; fuck your early-onset arthritis and dementia; fuck pro sports.

(F1 excepted.)

I haven't done the follow-up on this, but might it have something to do with statutes of limitations having run out for countersuits and potential criminal actions brought by the people whose lives he's ruined by suing and harassing them for "falsely" accusing him of doping?

Lance Armstrong has been profoundly humiliated, and an exploding array of legal proceedings will soon make him one of the poorest men on Earth; he's a 41-year-old cancer survivor. And we're told he's "fighting" for the right to participate in decathlons, or triathalons, or HowEverManylons.

Serious, wtf? It's pathetic. It would be like a forty-year old woman demanding to enter the Miss North Dakota contest... To prove what? To whom? To earn admiration?

Armstrong was always pathetic.. I sincere enjoy seeing sportswriters being made to crawl... They deserve it for giving their lives to the composition of rhetoric that glorifies the mundane.

> it have something to do with statutes
> of limitations

That phrase, SOL, appeared in my twitter feed yesterday next to the words "five years." This fucker is still playing people.

God, I love it when this stuff happens to people in fields I don't care about.

Dont know, the statute of limitation may not apply. Couldnt one argue fraud which was ongoing upto the moment of the Oprahview mean the statute should start from that line?

The all-consuming need to "win". It's that simple. At some point it stops being honest competition, at some point it becomes, at some deep psychological level, a life-and-death struggle, if they they don't win they will "die". And even the best will do ANYTHING to stay on top, because they have nothing if they don't. As a cyclist and a testicular cancer/chemo survivor myself, Mr. Armstrong used to be a hero. Now, the best I can must is pity, and that just makes me sad.

"F1 excepted."

Formula 1 is for pansies, Crid.

Disclaimer: What I know about motorsport is precisely nothing.

Which is what I would have preferred to know about doping or PED use. But everyone, the Congress included, seemed compelled to get in on the act. On the other hand, the whole drama gave anyone paying attention a lesson on human fallibility, as if they needed it. As regards our sports "heroes," I never quite understood what the term meant.

This article calls Armstrong a "former cancer survivor." I thought the Oprah interview was going to have WAY bigger news than doping. http://j.mp/SBoCie

> I thought the Oprah interview was going
> to have WAY bigger news

Bah-dum-PUM

Lance Armstrong became a millionaire under false pretenses. Until he gives back is ill gotten gains his apology is phony.

By the way, another Reason article from just this morning suggests that the Tour de France would have been just about impossible without doping. A German rider is quoted thus:

For as long as the Tour has existed, since 1903, its participants have been doping themselves. No dope, no hope. The Tour, in fact, is only possible because - not despite the fact - there is doping. For 60 years this was allowed. For the past 30 years it has been officially prohibited. Yet the fact remains; great cyclists have been doping themselves, then as now.

Another by the way: This Wikipedia article gives a pretty good rundown on blood doping, which is what Lance Armstrong appears to be guilty of.

This is what happens when you spend too much time around Sheryl Crow.

All she wants to do is have some fun.

The problem with Armstrong is not that he doped but that he defamed, sued, and generally harassed out of the business people who pointed out the truth. On the other hand, it's amusing to see people who are all shocked now. It's been obvious for years what his story was.

Regarding Crow, there is a funny part in Lance Armstrong's War where Crow, who has been following Armstrong on the Tour de France, tells the author that she looks forward to when Lance accompanies her on one of her band tours. I remember laughing and thinking that she was naive if she didn't realize that their relationship worked only so long as it was all about him. I wasn't surprised when they broke up.

Even if he paid back everything his apology would be phony. He doenst think he did anything wrong.

And quite frankly I dont think he technically did. He was just better at cheating than everyone else.

The problem with Armstrong is not that he doped but that he defamed, sued, and generally harassed out of the business people who pointed out the truth.

This is, I think, the salient point. He tried to ruin the names of people who were telling the truth, which says more about his character than his victories, his charity, or the doping itself.

All sports competitions will continue to be about what kinds of advantages competitors can get away with. If it isn't doping, it'll be about fiddling with blood oxygen levels or arguing about whether prosthetic devices give people advantages. Some "disabled" athletes can outperform Olympians. I have no idea how we'll determine what's legal 20 years from now.

Cheaters cheat. Liars lie. I would not play tiddly winks with Armstrong, Bill Belichick, Marion Jones, etc. They are cheats and despicable people.

Unfortunately, they infect the people around them. Every cyclists, track star, baseball player is under suspicion. It is even worse if they have teammates.

I used to like the New England Patriots but now I assume that Belichick is cheating during every game. As far as I am concerned, the Patriots have never won a game while he was a coach. Do they have great players or are they beneficiaries of cheating? I have no idea.

Bill Belichick has always spoken highly of YOU, Curtis... But did he ever ask himself rhetorical questions?

He's just talking because he feels like a victim that needs justice.

Think about the way he whines about it, "But everyone was doing it, so I had to do it too in order to level the playing field!"

In his head he was basically forced to do it by his peers and then singled out and unjustly attacked because of his success.

Does he feel bad he did it? Nope. Or slandered others? Nope. Again to him it's just a victim defending themselves,

He's got a big ego to show off.

You can still see it in his face; he's smirking in the first shot of the video linked in Amy's post.

And while I know she's had some totally-gratuitous, California-style plastic surgery, the blunt truth of the matter is that Oprah's lookin' ok nowadays.

She still talks too much, but it was always going to be that way.

The USPS spent $ 30 million sponsoring this guy. Lawsuits are flying left and right:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikakelton/2013/01/17/the-whistleblower-lawsuit-against-lance-armstrong-what-to-expect-next/

The Bailey article (RPM's link above) makes the implicit point that this stuff is essentially un-police-able and has been going on forever. These are not contests between God's Most-Blessed or The World's Hardest-Working.

So why are we expected to care about athletes?

Besides, y'know, other things?

The USPS spent $ 30 million sponsoring this guy.

Why was the USPS sponsoring a cycle racing team?

Why is the USPS spending our money to advertise its services ... in France?

"It seemed odd to me that Lance Armstrong was suddenly willing to spill about doping"

He's eaten Crow before :)

My thinking as well Conan.

Lance Armstrong has shown himself to be maybe the biggest scumbag in recent sports history. The lying and cheating is bad enough, but going after innocent people who were forced to tell the truth is reprehensible.

It's not exculpatory in my eyes, but I do think he's right about everyone else doping too. From where I sit it appears a serious contender would have been a chump to not dope - what would be the point? So if you're a contendah you dope, and do a damn good job of it. So he started working with Ferrari.

But I think the stuff aggravated his already overweaning narcissism and aggression. That's common and I think it's why there are so many rapes, pot arrests, and other criminal scandals in almost all the college football towns.

pot arrests?

@Crid: "So why are we expected to care about athletes?"

Are we expected to care about athletes any more than we would about other celebrities?

Looks like I owe Curtis a big apology.

> going after innocent people who were forced
> to tell the truth is reprehensible.

Agree... Cases this grievous deserve more than financial compensation, which he'll not be able to provide anyway.

Perhaps a period of time is in order.

> Are we expected to care about athletes any
> more than we would about other celebrities?

well, people often do... And again, cities will scrawl for these team owners. Who needs it?

Bah, whole thing is ridiculous.

He used chemicals to push his body to the absolute limits of his human capacity. He and he alone bears the physical consequences of having done so.

I say fuck it all. Doping is rampant because everybody wants to win, and if one guy is doping you're not going to beat him unless you are to, and maybe not even then if he's just that goddamn good at whatever sport it is.

Testing is either corrupt or sparsely done or this shit would get caught very quickly. SO yeah...it just seems a waste of time to do it if its going to take 15 years or more to catch somebody.

So I say change the system to work this way:

Dope if you like, and if you win in the first 3 places of a race, you get your prize. Anything less than that, you get nothing. But all those who compete without doping, get paid regardless of place.

You won't eliminate it, but fuck, at least it will be honest and offer an incentive for a lot of competitors to do so without enhancement.

Well, you know, even bad attention is still...attention.

I think that at this point, Armstrong would give his left ball to get some respect from anyone.

"Perhaps a period of time is in order."

I agree, but I like it this way better. The brazen attempt to get ahead of the media, the demand for forgiveness on his schedule - it's obvious nothing has changed about this guy other than his income.

If I was in his financial shoes I'd want to stop the bleeding asap.

Maybe the witless fans who insist on raising up ball-tossers, bike riders, and synchronized-swimmersexuals to hero status will get a brief insight from this behavior.

Me, I'll stick with hero-worshipping great musicians. We KNOW they're wasted half the time and they don't deny it.

It's wrong for the same reason riding a motorcycle would be wrong... it was against the rules of the game. Don't like the rules, don't play.

Having said that, in the case of Armstrong, I wish they'd left him alone, because I think he was a good symbol for cancer survivors to rally around.

There's something disturbing about this culture of building someone into such an idol and then knocking them off their pedestal and kicking and spitting on them when they're down.

There's something disturbing about this culture of building someone into such an idol and then knocking them off their pedestal and kicking and spitting on them when they're down. -- NicoleK at January 19, 2013 11:24 AM

The thing is that idol gets in their mind that he/she can cheat with impunity and get away with it.

Then when the admirers catch the celebrity in a bad situation, they feel used or disappointed.

I wonder what will happen when Taylor Swift ends up stepping wrong. ;-)

That's why I truly believe in the aphorism "Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies." The admirers are not really even friends.