In this Monday, Jan. 14, 2013 photo provided by Harpo Studios Inc., cyclist Lance Armstrong listens to a question from Oprah Winfrey during taping for the show "Oprah and Lance Armstrong: The Worldwide Exclusive" in Austin, Texas. The two-part episode of "Oprah's Next Chapter" will air nationally Thursday and Friday, Jan. 17-18, 2013. (AP Photo/Courtesy of Harpo Studios, Inc., George Burns)
In this Monday, Jan. 14, 2013 photo provided by Harpo Studios Inc., cyclist Lance Armstrong listens to a question from Oprah Winfrey during taping for the show "Oprah and Lance Armstrong: The Worldwide Exclusive" in Austin, Texas. The two-part episode of "Oprah's Next Chapter" will air nationally Thursday and Friday, Jan. 17-18, 2013. (AP Photo/Courtesy of Harpo Studios, Inc., George Burns)
ARMSTRONG'S BIG TEST: Fallen sports icon Lance Armstrong's "no-holds-barred interview" with Oprah Winfrey is airing Thursday night on her OWN network. AP Sports Columnist John Leicester is watching the broadcast and giving his impressions of the interview as it unfolds:
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NOT A MOMENT TOO SOON:
Nearly 14 years after first winning the bike race that turned him into a global sports megastar, is Lance Armstrong finally going to tell the truth ? or his latest version of it ? about the role performance-enhancing drugs played in his career and seven Tour de France victories?
It's not as though he has much choice. The evidence gathered by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency of systematic drug use on his U.S. Postal Service cycling team was so overwhelming that Armstrong could look foolish and deluded if he insists to Oprah Winfrey that he rode clean, as he's always done until now. But, at this point, who still believes that?
Armstrong hasn't spoken at length and publicly about the thick dossier of evidence USADA published in October. To now admit to doping after years of denial will undoubtedly be painful and embarrassing for Armstrong, a proud and intensely competitive man. But this is also an opportunity for Armstrong to start the long trek back from disgrace and try to seek forgiveness.
Will he seize it or make matters worse by being insincere and sparing with the facts and apologies?
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WHO IS USING WHOM:
For Armstrong to speak first to Winfrey and not to a roomful of sports journalists who have followed his rise and fall smacks of a public relations exercise. If Armstrong's purpose was to help his sport rather than himself, he would have come clean not to America's high priestess of televised confessions but to anti-doping officials who wanted to learn firsthand how he and his team pulled off what USADA called "the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen."
His choice of interviewer will mainline Armstrong into America's living rooms. That's where he needs to start repairing his tattered reputation to become marketable again. Speaking to Winfrey is a play for forgiveness ? not from the cycling community but from a far broader audience, including disappointed fans of the cancer fighter and viewers who don't care for cycling but are hungry consumers of celebrity and the modern pantomime of public disgrace and redemption.
Landing Armstrong and becoming confessor to the man who for so long looked the least likely candidate in sports to admit to doping is a massive coup for Winfrey. But she could take some heat if she didn't ask the tough questions and if the material proves unworthy of her network's decision to spread it out over two nights, not one as first announced.
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THE TIMING:
Why now?
Only when cornered is Armstrong making what is expected to be an ungainly U-turn after more than a decade of insisting that he competed clean and of hounding those who suggested otherwise.
Sponsors who stuck with Armstrong through the storms of suspicion that punctuated his cycling career have now abandoned him, costing him millions in future earnings.
To spare it more turmoil, Armstrong was forced to cut ties to Livestrong, the cancer-fighting charity he founded in 1997, the year after he was diagnosed at age 25 with testicular cancer that spread to his lungs and brain.
USADA has voided all of his competition results from Aug. 1, 1998, including the record string of seven Tour wins that made him rich, famous and buddies with pop stars and presidents.
The International Olympic Committee this week wrote to Armstrong asking that he return the bronze medal he won at the 2000 Olympics.
The sport's boss, Pat McQuaid, has said Armstrong "deserves to be forgotten in cycling."
In short, Armstrong's reputation couldn't sink any lower. To have any hope of surfacing again, he had to do something. He surely never anticipated that he would ever hit bottom like this ? coming clean to Winfrey. Or will it just be clean-ish?
Armstrong must have decided that the alternative ? do nothing ? was worse.
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BURNING QUESTIONS:
There are so many questions that it's hard to whittle them down. If Armstrong confesses to doping, this would be my top five:
Why? Other riders ? perhaps not many, but some ? refused to take drugs to win, why didn't you?
Do you think doping contributed to your cancer? How after surviving cancer could you play Russian roulette with your body by doping?
Did bosses at the top of the sport, in the International Cycling Union, know about your doping, did they cover up positive tests, tip you off to tests, take money to look the other way and, if so, will you name and shame?
Outside your circle of family and friends, name three people who most deserve an apology from you and explain why.
In your second biography, "Every Second Counts," in 2003, you wrote that it would "just kill me" if anyone said to your kids that "your dad's the big fake, the doper." What lessons do you think they should draw from your rise and fall, your cheating and lies?
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THE DECOR:
Do those exceedingly long straws in the glasses of water next to Armstrong and Winfrey during their interview remind anyone else of the rubber tubing that dopers use to give themselves illegal blood transfusions?
Some of Armstrong's teammates testified to USADA that they doped and injected in hotel rooms when they rode together on the Tour. Did they look anything like this hotel room in Austin, Texas, where Winfrey taped the interview on Monday?
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John Leicester is an international sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at jleicester(at)ap.org or follow him at http://twitter.com/johnleicester
Associated Press
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