Confessing to all those lies doesn't add up to telling the truth

ATHLETICS:I dreamt I saw Lance Armstrong again last night, as real as you or me, talking to Oprah Winfrey, and in the utmost misery. "So I lied, I lied," he told her, in a voice without restraint, then went searching for the very soul that many years ago he sold.

I dreamt I saw him crying, head bowed now in shame, like the wicked and dastardly messenger of deceit, who so passionately hates his life. “And forgive me, mam,” he begged and pleaded, from the corners of his mouth, “for only now do I know what it is that I’ve done wrong.”

Then he cried and cried and cried again, from all the petty jealousies, then the dream turned darker still, as in the spirit of Knut Hamsun, he reviled himself for his sad confessions, shouted bitter epithets at himself, heaped priceless treasures of coarse abusive language on himself...

Then he lay back into the gutter, a willing object of derision, hardly aghast at all as we walked over him, trampling on his face, one by one...

Then the dream ended and I awoke, in darkness, turned on Discovery, at 2am, and there he was for real, with Oprah, the same, only a little older looking, Lance Armstrong who won the Tour de France seven times, back-to-back, sold out to Nike, Oakley and the US Postal Service, helped sell me and millions of others our first Trek racing bike, then came back four years later and tried to do it all over again.

“No holds barred,” they agreed with a smile, then instead of Cecil B DeMille’s rule for keeping the audience’s attention, to begin with an earthquake and work up to a climax, Oprah began with a few minor tremors and worked back to the rumours of a landslide – so that in the end, they inexplicably raised more questions than they actually answered, and for that it took the sort of quality performances that would have made DeMille himself proud.

No reviling, no bitter epithets, no shame, at least not in any convincing manner, but was it ever going to be any other way? So it took just five minutes for Armstrong to say “sorry,” another two minutes to first acknowledge his mistakes, followed by perhaps the most ironic, yet telling, admission, that he was “out of the business of calling someone a liar”, and yet followed by his enduring discomfort at even skirting around the truth, boldly justified by the simple realisation Armstrong was “not the most believable guy in the world right now”.

He certainly lived up to that, adamant that in no way did he dope during his comeback in 2009, when he finished third in the Tour, despite the reels of evidence that he did. Emotionally he was living up to the Armstrong of old, too, by his very lack of emotion – beyond perhaps the feeling he was somehow controllable and comfortable with it all.

This was the confession from a man who had the audacity to admit that a cheat is merely a five-letter word found in the dictionary. “But why, but why,” Oprah asked him with her voice, so that, as if on cue, he brought up his testicular cancer.

Why? Why not take testosterone, when after going through what he did, surely he was running low? “Listen, I deserve this,” he agreed too, because after all, he did have air in his tyres, and water in his bottle, just like every other rider did, and when he thinks back at the arrogance of his own behaviour he realises “that’s not good”, was even embarrassed by it all. But if the devil really is in the detail, like what exactly went on between himself and the UCI, he certainly wasn’t about to go there, at least not without something in return.

Because as everyone knows, the only reason he agreed to talk with Oprah was so he can get back on his bike, perhaps even rediscover some of the adoring fans of old. But for anyone who wanted to believe Armstrong still had something worth believing in, this enduring ability to admit to what he wanted to, without ever once making it a full admission, is still scary; his belief that he can explain himself, without ever making a full explanation, is scarier; and the idea that he’s willing to make an apology, without ever fully apologising, is the scariest.

If part of his admission, his apology too, was for being caught, then it was only for what they used to say about the old criminals of New Jersey. “We wouldn’t be sitting here if I didn’t come back,” he declared, quite unapologetically, as good as saying one of the things he was truly sorry for was that he did come back, because otherwise, he would have got away with everything.

If this is what happens when Armstrong comes face to face with himself, looks at the man in the mirror, still tries to reconcile himself, but without any true or full reconciliation, everything he says is still claptrap. What was already certain about Lance Armstrong is that all the truth added up to one big lie, but even now, all his confessed lies don’t add up to the truth.

“What do you say when sorry is not enough?” Oprah asked, before we all dozed off back to sleep. You tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and that can only begin by putting one hand on the bible.

Even for a non-believer such as Lance Armstrong, the truth, otherwise, will remain in his dreams.