We all knew it was coming. Slowly, lawyers are taking aways Lance's money $1 million at a time. This time, judges in Austin have ordered Lance and Tailwind Sports to pay back the $10 million in bonuses he/they got as a result of money accrued during his TdF wins. As a reminder, this lawsuit, specifically the arbitration in 2005, was what laid the foundation for the USADA hearings which later led to the trainwreck of an interview with Oprah and the floodgate of confessions of top US pros. The downward spiral for Lance.
...and for Lance, this might not be the end handing out the cheese. The two biggies are up next. Floyd Landis and the US Government, if they do decide to follow through. By some estimates, Lance has about $125 million in the bank (minus the $10 million from this). So he's still pretty effin rich. Right now, he has eff you money. Butttt maybe not for long.
Earlier this month, my man was in Aspen doing Aspeny things with his girlfriend Anna Hansen. I can't even keep up with who has kids with who at this point. I think they have kids together but they aren't married. I think they have multiple kids together, maybe two. Anyshit, as the story goes, the couple is driving home from somewhere and Lance had been drinking. He hit two parked cars. TWO!! Homeboy tells his girlfriend to take the blame on the scene, which she does and that story goes for awhile. I guess in later interviews with the police, they snake the truth out of her and the jig is up. Lance had been drinking and driving and asked his baby momma to take the fall. Smooth.
Here we go.
In an interview with BBC News, he looked physically bad. With his eyes sunken, hair greying and wrinkles starting to develop, it's a Lance Armstrong we haven't seen before. The defeated Lance. The severely defeated Lance. The combination of stress, lack of sleep and long term effects of EPO and testosterone have made Lance look like the poster boy for a sub-human species developed by living near a genetic testing facility next door to the Sun.
In this interview, he ALMOST admits he messed up but he just can't pull the trigger. He goes as far to say that he feels bad about bullying people throughout the years but he just can't take any blame for the actual doping itself because, you know..EVERYBODY WAS DOING IT. The major headline from this interview was "I'd probably do it again."
Out of all of this, I'm trying to figure out who is giving Lance all this PR advice. Going back decades, the only thing Lance had going for himself was that he won bike races. Mr. Personality he was not. He got away with it when he was on top but it now looks like he's having a very hard time adjusting to the fact that the majority of public perception is negative. His Oprah interview was an opportunity to just come clean and say "I did it. I screwed up. Yes. Yes. Yes. These are the facts." Instead, he does what Lance does best, skirt around answers and not take ownerships. While he was at it, he threw his 'friends' under the bus and called women fat, never a smart thing to do on Oprah.
So fast forward back to this past month and Lance is in the news again, fucking up. He's had so many chances over the years to redeem himself but just can't do it. This latest stint of asking the mother of two of his kids is perhaps the latest and most telling story of how much of a scumbag this guy is. Who would do that?
Lance needs to be in therapy, like full-time 40 hours a week...at least. All the lies have added up and he hasn't changed one bit. I believe him that he'd 'do it again' and I'm sure that if he was racing today 'he'd do it again' as well.
Hopefully, this will be my last article on Lance. Probably not. I wasted a lot of energy and time watching him be a machine in all those races. He basically owes me every July back for a decade. July is a good month too. What a soap opera.