We have already touched briefly on your legendary interview with Lance Armstrong back in 2001
in that hotel can you just expand on that a little bit more for us.
Yer the 2001 interview with Lance was actually funny almost but it's only funny in hindsight
at the time I didn't think it was funny because erm as I wrote a line in the book
which is you know I was high on the ecstasy of sanctimony you know Philip Roth's line
and I was going there all sanctimonious asking Lance all these doping questions and talk
about you know questions being hit with a dead bat I would say to Lance ehm, Lance what
do you know about cycling history and doping, and he'd say "not very much" and I said
well you've surely heard the name Tom Simpson he said yer yer yer kind of vaguely you know
I said well Tom Simpson died on Mont Ventoux you know in, in controversial circumstances
and I hadn't that sentence uttered and Lance jumped in and said but he never tested positive
and I thought hold on here now, there was amphetamines found in Tom Simpsons pocket
there was amphetamines found in his blood stream there was amphetamines found in his
suitcase back at the hotel but Lance says he never tested positive. Now why would Lance
say that and it was absolutely clear to me Lance said that because as long as you didn't
test positive nobody could prove you used drugs and that was going to be the mantra
that would govern his entire cycling life, I passed the tests you believe me, you have
no right to ask questions beyond that, obviously I came from a different place but the interview
that day in eastern France was, was almost ridiculous because I was asking questions
which I thought were perfectly normal and Lance was giving me ridiculous answers, but
they weren't answers that proved he doped. For example I would say, well your best friend
at the time Kevin Livingston he is part of a criminal investigation in Italy with Michele
Ferrari have you discussed this with Kevin? And Lance would look at me and say no actually
I haven't discussed it I said he's your best friend you share rooms with him you go
out on 6 hour training rides with him he's involved in a criminal investigation and you
haven't said Hey Kev what's all this about you and Ferrari, you've never said that?
No, no I've never said that, he said there's lots of things we don't talk about. And
I mean it was just ridiculous I mean as I said it wasn't proof that he doped but it
sure was proof that he could lie because pretty much every answer he gave me I felt was a
lie you know he, he was telling me that I know nothing about doping but basically that
was for 2 hours maybe an hour and a half hours of an interview and I kind of, I banged my
head, I banged my head off the stone wall and at the end of it all I had was a sore
head you know because I didn't, I didn't get any honesty from him at all. Maybe I went
away with a sense of you know what you're going to have to keep digging here because
this guy isn't going to give up anything voluntarily.
Can you ever see Lance Armstrong giving a kind of Frost Nixon interview and admitting
all that he's done over the years?
Lots of people wonder about whether Lance is going to do a tell all interview you know
turn up on Opera Winfrey or where ever you know Letterman or Jay Leno you know and do
his tell all interview. I feel he has to do that to kind of rebuild his life because he's
in a really bad place now but the kind of practical difficulty he's got is that once
he admits that he did dope well then the people are going after him to get money back that
they paid to him SCA Insurance company, Sunday Times newspaper, US postal all their sponsorship.
If he admits he doped those cases are all immediately lost he then has no defence so
I believe his lawyers are telling him now, sit tight Lance, you can not do that tell
all interview but his life remains in a kind of a purgatory you know that, you know telling
all might be hell for a certain amount of time but it gives him a chance to start climbing
upwards out of there and where he is now he's stuck and uh I hope that he's, he's getting
his financial stuff dealt with and he's going to do the tell all interview and admit
to all the sins of the past because until he does that I don't think he has any kind
of future worth having.