Journalist Paul Kimmage says shamed cyclist Lance Armstrong passed up to the chance to be a "force for good" in cycling, on the back the American's fresh admission that he would "probably" dope again if he could repeat his career.
The 43-year-old was stripped of his seven Tour de France titles and banned from sport for life by the United States Anti-Doping Agency (Usada) in 2012. "If I was racing in 2015, no, I wouldn't do it again because I don't think you have to," Armstrong told the BBC. "If you take me back to 1995, when doping was completely pervasive, I would probably do it again."
It was Armstrong’s first interview since first publicly confessing to Oprah Winfrey that he had used performance-enhancing drugs during his career.
"I can actually understand what he’s saying," Kimmage told The Pat Kenny Show today. "The points he makes about 1995 are absolutely right ... the all-pervasive culture in the sport in the time, that he didn't really have a choice."
But the Dubliner was critical of BBC interviewer Dan Roan for not pursuing Armstrong on a point: "What the interviewer needed to do was say was [say] 'okay, stop Lance now. Because three years later in 1998 ... just after you’d had your cancer and came back to the sport, the whole doping problem exploded for the first time. Everybody saw it for what is was. And that was the very next year you won your first Tour. You didn’t have to dope then. You could have come back with this all out in the open and actually been a force for good. Instead ... you dragged everybody back.'
"That’s what he needed to do and that’s what he didn’t do."
Kimmage also lamented the "betrayal of sports fans" when offset against Armstrong fundraising for charity. "'Looks at all the good I did for charity' – look at all the bad you did to sport," the former Irish road cycling champion added.
Kimmage says he watched a clip of the interview on the BBC’s website and reckoned: "He looks a bit old. He’s got old. I don’t know whether that‘s the toll of it."
You can listen to the clip in question from Lance Armstrong's interview with the BBC here:
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