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#swf16 Lance and Me, David Walsh and the pursuit of Lance Armstrong: 9th November 2016. — Transcript

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0:00Uh before we get underway, I just want
0:01to thank a number of our sponsors. Our
0:03friends from the Tribe University who
0:05are here tonight have been wonderful
0:06partners of of the Sports Writers
0:08Festival since its inception. I know
0:10we've got some people from
0:10cyclingtips.com
0:12in the in the room tonight. Thank you to
0:14you as well for for being part of what
0:16we believe is going to be a growing
0:18institution in this town. We think we've
0:20established the idea of the Sports
0:21Writers Festival in the last 2 years and
0:23it's only going to get bigger and
0:24bigger. Also, our friends at 1116 SEN,
0:26the station I work on. Thank you for all
0:28the support. We couldn't have promoted
0:29the event without the radio support that
0:31we've had. And the Roar as well. The
0:33roar.com.au, fantastic sports writing
0:35website where you hear the real voice of
0:37sports fans day in day out about a whole
0:39raft of sports. And not forgetting the
0:41Green and Gold Army who are my partner
0:43Mike Etheridge who's one of the people
0:44who's helped put this together.
0:45I've been lucky enough to travel the
0:46world with him on numerous occasions
0:48taking Socceroos fans to the World Cup
0:50and it is a life-changing experience if
0:52you get to go on one of those tours. But
0:54I do want to read something before I
0:55invite David to the stage from Jamie
0:57Fuller, the chairman of Skins, one of
0:58our principal partners and sponsors of
1:00this event. Somebody David knows very
1:02well himself and has dealt with over the
1:03years. Jamie's support and his company's
1:05support has certainly been a cornerstone
1:07of what we've been able to do to get you
1:10here tonight. He would would have been
1:11here. As you probably know, David was
1:13meant to be here in October. Jamie was
1:15going to be here for this event to
1:16introduce him, but because of
1:18circumstance, he's had to go back to
1:20work in in Europe and he asked me to
1:22read part of this to you. He said, "I'm
1:24proud to be sponsoring this session at
1:25the Sports Writers Festival and to me
1:27through and the appearance of David
1:29Walsh. Uh for those of you who don't
1:30know my company Skins, we're a company
1:32born in Australia, headquartered in
1:33Switzerland. We operate in the UK, USA,
1:36Japan, and the Netherlands with global
1:37distribution and we pioneered
1:39compression wear for sports people. I
1:41got into Skins because of my passion for
1:43sport. It's a passion that has driven my
1:46life. I was never ever going to be a
1:47professional sports person, so I turned
1:49what I could to do well and that is
1:51business and made sports-related
1:53business a success. These are two key
1:55aspects of my love of sport. First, it's
1:56intergenerational. It's something that
1:58you can share with your parents and the
1:59people you love. And second, because of
2:01that, it has the power to change society
2:03for the good. All the good values that
2:05we associate with sport are also
2:07important to how we live our lives as
2:08individuals, as families, as
2:10communities, and as nations. The values
2:12of fair play, integrity, discipline,
2:14commitment, and teamwork. Doing the best
2:17you can possibly do and being the best
2:18you can possibly be on a level playing
2:21field and in true spirit of competition.
2:23These are the values that Skins as a
2:25brand likes to believe that it exhibits.
2:28However, the more that I got to know and
2:29work in sport, the more horrified I
2:31became at what sport had become.
2:33Corruption, doping, match-fixing,
2:35racism, people trafficking, trafficking,
2:38homophobia. They stem from the same
2:40problem, how sport is run. So, he got
2:43very much involved in anti-doping
2:45movement and also involved in
2:48fair play movement in for FIFA and human
2:51rights organizations that are working
2:52very hard to make sure that the World
2:54Cup in Qatar is one not built on the
2:55back of slavery. He does say that David
2:59is one of the people that he's most
3:00proud to be associated with because of
3:01his commitment to those very same values
3:04and that his commitment to that is
3:06something that has moved the needle very
3:08far in trying to make sure the sport
3:09that he loves, cycling, is one that is
3:11clean and on that fair playing field
3:13that we all hope that all the sport that
3:14we love will be able to compete on. Can
3:16you make him welcome to the stage? The
3:17man who wrote Seven Deadly Sins and L.A.
3:19Confidential.
3:22His conversation with David Walsh.
3:34Firstly, have you been enjoying
3:35Melbourne? Yeah, very much. I'm still a
3:37bit jet-lagged if I sound a bit more
3:39stupid than I would normally sound,
3:42it's probably to do with the fact that I
3:43don't know whether it's evening or
3:44morning.
3:46But no, I've always I mean, I've been
3:47coming to Australia since my first time
3:50to come was
3:511987
3:53Rugby World Cup. And which was the first
3:56and I've been coming at regular
3:58intervals ever since. And I must say
4:01that I've never come and not enjoyed
4:02Australia and
4:04and I say this now when I'm at home all
4:06the time, whenever Australia comes up
4:08at the time I wrote Seven Deadly Sins
4:11I
4:12I would have accepted if the book sold
4:13about 20,000
4:15because Armstrong went down on the 22nd
4:18of October.
4:19If you were going to let's be honest,
4:21everyone wants to If you bring out a
4:22book, you bring it out when people are
4:24ready to buy books. People are ready to
4:25buy books around Christmas, presents,
4:27all that stuff. The publishers came
4:29along with the idea and they said
4:31they said, "Can you do it in about 4
4:33weeks?"
4:34And I thought
4:35that's it. That's a little bit It's a
4:37little bit soon, but at the same time,
4:40we wouldn't be in the shops before
4:41Christmas. The books got in the shops um
4:45on the 13th of December, which is 12
4:48days before Christmas, which is about 10
4:50days of shopping.
4:52And
4:53if you'd said to me, "How much would it
4:54sell?" I would have said 20,000. If it
4:56sells 30,000, I'd be chuffed. And I was
4:59thinking worldwide 30,000, I'd be
5:02chuffed. That Christmas, it sold 30,000
5:06copies in Australia.
5:08And I was completely staggered. I mean,
5:11for Australians, I don't exist. Now,
5:13Lance Armstrong does. But why would
5:15Australians have bought
5:17that book in those numbers? I mean, the
5:20people in in Simon and Schuster in in
5:22Sydney and Melbourne were just flummoxed
5:25by it. They They believed in it. They
5:27put it in the shops, but they couldn't
5:28believe the reaction. And part of the
5:30reason I'm here is to say thank you to
5:32every single Australian because I never
5:35thought I would ever have any I've never
5:37had money in my life. I mean, we we have
5:39seven kids, so how could you have money?
5:42Um but Australia has done its bit, I can
5:45tell you.
5:47I I want to start with the latest news
5:49before we go back and look at the story.
5:52Lance Armstrong's been in court this
5:53week, in fact.
5:55In this court case, it's defending an
5:56action brought by Floyd Landis and the
5:58US authorities in relation to
5:59sponsorship money in US Postal. What do
6:01you know about that and how crucial is
6:03that to to Armstrong's future? It's
6:05absolutely central to his future because
6:09this is a case that Floyd Landis
6:11initiated way back, I think in 2010,
6:14under what Americans call the False
6:16Claims Act. It's qui tam. It's like the
6:19whistleblower suit. In other words
6:22you live in a town in the US. You
6:24realize your neighbor has been
6:26conducting a business in his garage and
6:28that he's been doing it without telling
6:30anybody and that you know he's not
6:32paying any tax on it and you go to the
6:34authorities and you say
6:37"My mate across the road, he's got a
6:38business and he's not telling you about
6:40it." They investigate him. They realize
6:42this is true and this guy then has to
6:45pay back 400,000 in unpaid tax because
6:49if you defraud the American exchequer of
6:51$1, the fine is $3.
6:54And the guy who
6:56did the whistleblowing, then the
6:58neighbor who who across the road, he
7:00gets a third of whatever the fine is.
7:02So, the bitter irony of this is that
7:03Floyd Landis could actually come out
7:05financially ahead.
7:06Floyd Landis could conceivably
7:09be paid $30 million as his part
7:13if Armstrong gets the full fine. Because
7:15what happened was US Postal sponsored
7:19Lance Armstrong's team. Lance Armstrong
7:21was part owner of the team. He still has
7:23quite a bit of money.
7:24Um Floyd Landis said
7:27"We defrauded the government out of that
7:29money. That's my claim.
7:31You know, I'm saying that we, the team,
7:32Lance Armstrong and all the owners of
7:34the team got that money from US Postal
7:37under false pretenses. In other words,
7:38we signed a contract, which they did,
7:40saying we don't dope and we doped up to
7:43our gills. So, they got about 33
7:45million, 32, 33 million.
7:48Now
7:50if if if the courts decide that money
7:53was gained illegally, you multiply that
7:55figure by three which is about 100
7:58million and that's the fine that Lance
7:59Armstrong could get. Now, he wouldn't
8:01have to pay it all,
8:03but he would have to pay quite a lot of
8:04it and he would certainly have to give
8:06up whatever wealth he has. So, he's
8:08looking at complete financial ruin. If
8:11it ends up like that, I believe that
8:13it's still very much in the balance
8:15because Armstrong's argument is US
8:17Postal got their money's worth. They
8:19can't be coming along now and and
8:23claiming they want it all back. And I
8:25have a certain amount of sympathy for
8:26that. I mean, US Postal said
8:29"You signed a contract saying you didn't
8:31dope. We believed you."
8:33And Armstrong said, "Come on." Armstrong
8:35are now saying, "Well, you must have
8:36known."
8:38And it's a perverse morality, isn't it?
8:41Yeah, but I can kind of understand it
8:42because US Postal didn't want to know. I
8:45mean, forgive me for kind of referring
8:47back to myself on this, but I brought
8:50out books and I and I had done, you
8:52know, lots of research. I'd written lots
8:54of stories. Nobody US Postal was ringing
8:57up David Walsh and saying, "Hold on.
8:59You know, David, tell us. What do you
9:01know? Because we're committing lots of
9:03tens of millions of dollars to this
9:05team. Give us all your information."
9:07They They didn't want to know. I mean,
9:10I've used an expression at different
9:11times, the irresponsibility of not
9:13knowing. And that's what US Postal had.
9:16They were being
9:17basically wanting to look the other way
9:19when people were accusing Lance
9:21Armstrong of doping.
9:22More recently for you, Bradley Wiggins.
9:25I mean, Wiggins
9:26he rode the recent London Six Day event.
9:28He said he
9:29at the end of that, almost in an
9:30Armstrong fashion, said he's considering
9:33a comeback in 2017. Would you be
9:35surprised if he did it? Yeah, I'd be
9:37staggered and I don't believe it will
9:38happen.
9:39But it could because I'm sure
9:42he's kind of disenchanted with all
9:45that's happened, but basically in my
9:47eyes
9:48Wiggins is now tarnished.
9:50He got these therapeutic use exemptions
9:52to use a banned product in 2011, 2012,
9:55and 2013 with Team Sky. A team that had
9:58set itself up on the basis of we're
10:00cleaner than clean. And people who
10:02supported them bought into them on that
10:04basis.
10:05And it turns out that Dave Brailsford,
10:07the boss, went with this thing of giving
10:10Wiggins a banned product to treat his
10:13asthma.
10:14But the banned product was incredibly
10:15powerful as a performance enhancer. And
10:18they gave it to him just before the Tour
10:19de France. Their argument is, well,
10:21that's when the pollen allergies kick
10:23in.
10:24But then in 2013, when he was when he
10:27wasn't riding the Tour de France, he was
10:28riding the Tour of Italy,
10:30they gave it to him on the 22nd of
10:32April,
10:33when the pollen allergies don't kick in.
10:35And to me it just stinks. And
10:38my feeling about Team Sky is
10:41they're now a damaged damaged goods. Do
10:43you feel in any way um embarrassed or or
10:47regretful that you're embedded with
10:48them? That you that you went and spent
10:50time with Team Sky in 2013 and wrote a
10:53book about them. And
10:54And you know, given that
10:56your your reputation was for for being,
10:58you know, scrupulous with with with
11:00keeping a distance from from teams
11:02because you want to have that critical
11:03distance. Was Was that something you
11:04regret doing?
11:06I It It is a good question. And I'm
11:09conflicted on it. Um
11:11See, it's fine to say now
11:14I should have
11:15um
11:16I should have just said no. When they
11:18offered me the opportunity to go to
11:20Dave Brailsford came along and said,
11:21"Look, you've done all this work on
11:23Armstrong. We're now the best team out
11:25there. We've just won the Tour de France
11:27in 2012 with Bradley Wiggins.
11:30We have nothing to hide. And to prove
11:32that to you, we'd like you to come and
11:34live in the team."
11:35And I said, "And I'll have access to
11:36everything. I can talk to everybody." I
11:38mean, very good Alaskan writer Daniel
11:41Coyle went with the Lance Armstrong team
11:44in 2005,
11:46his last year in the Tour de France.
11:48But they said to Daniel Coyle, "You
11:50can't speak to Michele Ferrari about
11:52doping." Now, Dave Brailsford was
11:53offering me a chance to come into Team
11:55Sky,
11:56no bars. I could speak to anybody. I
11:58could go anywhere. Everything would be
12:00accessible. And I thought, "Yeah, I'll
12:02go with that." Now, I could say
12:05oh,
12:06they were giving Wiggins They'd given
12:08Wiggins a TUE in 2011, 2012, and 2013.
12:13And if I'd known about those TUEs,
12:16I I I I absolutely certain I would not
12:18have gone in the team. I would not have
12:20accepted. But I didn't know about them.
12:23And people might say, "Well, why didn't
12:25you ask Brailsford, did he give Bradley
12:27Wiggins a TUE before the 2012 Tour de
12:29France?" Well,
12:31you know, you would ask that question if
12:33you'd been given some tip-off that that
12:35had existed. But it wasn't a question I
12:37was ever going to ask because I just
12:38didn't think that was even on the on the
12:41radar as a possibility. So,
12:43I don't really regret it because
12:46I did get an insight. What I wrote, I
12:49think mostly
12:51um like everything I wrote, I wrote
12:53honestly. I wrote I mean, I'd been in
12:55the team for about 7 months. Chris
12:57Froome won the Tour de France. And I And
12:59that was the point at which I made a
13:01judgment. And the headline on the Sunday
13:03Times piece said, "Why I believe in
13:05Chris Froome." And I did believe in
13:07Chris Froome.
13:07believe in Chris Froome?
13:08Yes, I do.
13:09I totally believe he's won the Tour de
13:11France three times clean. And people
13:13say, "But But But look at Wiggins."
13:16Separate person, separate situation.
13:19Different very different characters.
13:21And I believe that Team Sky, in a
13:23general sense,
13:25is a very clean team. But what they did
13:28with Wiggins, I mean, nobody else will
13:31say this because
13:32people pussyfoot around it. People say
13:35it was it was unethical or I mean, all
13:37the journalists will say, "Well, we're
13:39not saying they did they did anything
13:40illegal because it was within the laws
13:43of the sport. It may be maybe it's
13:45questionable."
13:46I'd go further than that. To me, it was
13:48dirty what they did.
13:50Uh they gave Wiggins TUEs that I don't
13:52believe
13:53his medical situation merits it. And I
13:56think they gave it to him as a kind of a
13:57reinsurance or an insurance just to just
14:01to give him a better chance to compete
14:03better in the Tour de France.
14:05I want to take you right back before we
14:06start talking about your first encounter
14:08with Armstrong to your love of cycling
14:10and where it came from. Because you
14:12write about it in in Seven Deadly Sins.
14:13There was a as a writer by the name of
14:15Sean Kelly who you you you know, I guess
14:17you idolized or you loved as a younger
14:19man. But you also discovered something
14:21about him along the way that was
14:22probably the first window that you had
14:23on the realities of professional cycling
14:25in the late '80s or in the '80s and
14:27which led to, as we know, what was
14:29revealed later on. Yeah. I mean, as a
14:31I'm almost as a prelude to that,
14:34this sounds ridiculous when I say it,
14:36but the only thing it's got in its favor
14:38is it's true. I wanted to be a sports
14:40writer from the age of six. And you can
14:42say, "How could anybody know what they
14:44wanted to be when they were six?"
14:45Honestly, I did. And I never varied. My
14:48mother wanted me to be a teacher. And I
14:50said, "No, I want to be a sports
14:51writer." But
14:52I loved the act of writing and I love
14:55sport. And I just put the two together
14:57from the moment I could think, all I
14:58wanted to be. And first job I got was in
15:01a After going through university, I got
15:03a job in small provincial newspaper in
15:05Ireland.
15:07And then in 1980, I got a job in a
15:09national newspaper as a sports writer,
15:11which was the ultimate dream.
15:13And at the time, there was a cyclist who
15:15lived 16 miles from where I lived. And
15:17you know the way you have an affinity to
15:19somebody who comes from your part of the
15:21country. And this guy was the about the
15:23best cyclist in the world in one-day
15:24races, for sure, Sean Kelly.
15:27And he was rising He would In 1984, he
15:29would become world number one.
15:31And
15:33I felt outraged that he wasn't getting
15:35any coverage in Ireland. And I I had no
15:38interest in cycling. I never cycled in
15:39my life. But I could see this guy was
15:41winning a stage of the Tour de France.
15:43And we'd look at our Irish newspapers
15:45and he would get two paragraphs.
15:47Yesterday, Sean Kelly won the stage in
15:49Toulouse-Le Bas. He'd beat such and such
15:51a guy in the sprint. And it means that
15:53Kelly moves from 46th in the overall
15:55classification to 38th. End of story.
15:58So, Irish guy wins a stage in the Tour
16:00de France and nobody knows about it. And
16:02And I decided this was my first
16:04journalistic crusade. I was going to
16:07introduce the Irish public to this
16:09fantastic man, Sean Kelly. I mean,
16:11to tell you how bad I got that disease,
16:15I I I said to my wife in middle of 1983,
16:19I said, "How would you feel about my
16:20giving up my job in the Irish Press, the
16:22newspaper I worked for at the time, and
16:24we go to live in Paris?" And she said,
16:26"Well, why would we go to Paris?"
16:28You know, and I said um Now, at this
16:30time we had two young kids, both under
16:32the age of two. And I said um "Because I
16:35want to follow the Tour de France and I
16:37want to you know, write a book about
16:39Sean Kelly, this Irish cyclist." And she
16:41said, "Yeah, I'm on for that." And we
16:43went to We went to Paris, lived there
16:45for a year. Two children became three.
16:47Our third-born, Simon, was born in
16:48Paris. And I wrote the book on Kelly.
16:51And you're absolutely right when you say
16:53something happened there. And I'm not
16:55claiming to be any kind of journalistic
16:57paragon.
16:58Because
16:59one morning um I went off to cover a
17:02race called Paris-Brussels.
17:04And I was with a friend of mine, Paul
17:05Kimmage. And we we Kimmage was staying
17:09in the house with me because he was an
17:11amateur cyclist and we took him in
17:12because his brother had gone home and he
17:14was left on his own. And he came and he
17:16lived with us for about 3 months. And um
17:19we went out to the start of this race. I
17:20was covering it. He was just coming as a
17:22fan.
17:23And we went to see Kelly sitting He was
17:25sitting like The boot of the car was
17:27open and Kelly was just sitting sitting
17:29in the boot, feet on the ground. His
17:30bike was there and we're chatting. And
17:32we thought it was just unbelievable to
17:34get chatting to this guy for about a
17:35half an hour.
17:36And um And then it came to
17:39the whistle sounded for him to get to
17:41the start. And he got up on his bike.
17:43And Kelly had a way of checking the tire
17:46pressure in his rear wheels. And he
17:48would do that by
17:49he would catch the saddle in the cheeks
17:51of his backside and he would kind of
17:53jump up and down like that in the saddle
17:55to check the pressure.
17:57And as he jumped up and down,
17:59Kimmage and I heard the sound of pills
18:01rattling in a plastic container.
18:04And it was like the most awful sound you
18:07could imagine for two kind of cycling
18:09kind of
18:10you know, fans. Because even though I
18:12was a journalist, I was primarily a fan
18:14of Sean Kelly's.
18:16And it's a funny thing, the sound of
18:18pills hitting that plastic, it's a
18:20completely distinct sound in that It
18:23couldn't have been anything else.
18:24It couldn't have been anything else. We
18:25both I looked at Kimmage. I looked and
18:27said, "Did you hear that?" And he looked
18:29at me and said, "Yeah, I heard it."
18:31And I never wrote about that.
18:33I never wrote a line about that. I was
18:35writing a biography of the of the guy.
18:38So, I It wasn't his book. It was my book
18:40on him. It wasn't an autobiography. And
18:43I should have put that in the book. And
18:45if I was a proper journalist, I would
18:46have asked him about it. What were the
18:47pills? Because that day he tested
18:50positive.
18:52His first positive test.
18:54And I never mentioned those pills until
18:56I was writing Seven Deadly Sins, which
18:58was the point at which I was getting
18:59everything off my chest.
19:02But But in between times, you did And I
19:04think it's instructive of what was to
19:05come. You did get a chance to make that
19:07decision again with someone that most of
19:09us will remember here, Michelle Smith,
19:11who emerged in the 1996 Olympic Games in
19:13the pool out of nowhere as the Irish
19:16super fish. And um was quite clear, I
19:19think most Australians, as you know,
19:20David, we've talked about this, rather
19:22strangely keen on on uh swimming at the
19:24Olympic Games. So, we kind of knew that
19:26that was odd. But in Ireland, she was
19:28being celebrated as as as the uh as the
19:31new the reigning monarch of of Dublin,
19:33wasn't she?
19:33Totally. Yeah. I mean, if you consider
19:35that the Olympics have been going, I
19:37think, the modern Olympics since 1896,
19:411896
19:43to And this was
19:451996,
19:47Atlanta. It was '96.
19:49100 years of Olympic Games, Ireland as a
19:52country won four gold medals in 100
19:54years. And then in one week, it won
19:57another three.
19:59Right?
20:01In a sport, swimming.
20:03Right?
20:05Previously,
20:07in all the times we were swimming,
20:09in all the times we were swimming,
20:11uh we had swimmers going to the
20:12Olympics.
20:14We regarded it in Ireland as a result if
20:16they didn't drown.
20:18You know,
20:19I mean, I told I told Francis the story
20:21and it This is This is my favorite
20:23sports story ever now.
20:25We're going to take a diversion back to
20:26Montreal 1976.
20:27Montreal 1976.
20:30I had two friends who covered those
20:32games.
20:33Uh
20:34Tom O'Riordan and uh Jimmy Meegan. And
20:36they were working for
20:38two evening newspapers in Dublin. And
20:41they had to make a decision whether they
20:42were going to go to the swimming venue
20:44for the heats of the 1,500 m because
20:47there was an Irish guy in it called
20:48Kevin Williamson.
20:50Will we go? Well, because we'll be able
20:52to pick up the result at the press
20:53center
20:54and we don't have to go uh and
20:56eventually their conscience got the
20:57better of them and they went. And they
20:58missed the start of the race.
21:00And but they only missed about They'd
21:02only gone about two lengths of the 1,500
21:04m or maybe three lengths. But already
21:06Kevin Williamson was half a length
21:08behind the second last swimmer, right?
21:10And they thought, "Oh god, it's going to
21:12be tough." But they were really going
21:13there to get quotes from him afterwards
21:15because they knew he wasn't going to
21:16qualify. Cuz Irish swimmers never
21:18qualified for next round. So, Kevin
21:20Williamson in the end finished over a
21:22length behind the second last swimmer.
21:24So, if you're an Irish journalist, what
21:26you did was, you know, don't just blame
21:27him because competition is really stiff
21:29at the Olympics. Just check on his
21:31personal best and see did he at least
21:34get near his personal best or beat his
21:35personal best. And Kevin Williamson was
21:388 seconds outside his personal best,
21:41which was very disappointing. Even if
21:42you were trying to be kind, this was
21:45This was a difficult one to kind of
21:47square. So, the journalists went to him.
21:50And they said, "Oh, Kevin, tough luck,
21:51you know, how did it How did you feel?"
21:53Uh he said, "I wasn't at my best. I just
21:56don't know. You know, I just I didn't I
21:58didn't get anywhere near my personal
22:00best, so that's really disappointing."
22:02And they said, "Any reason why you've
22:04kind of underperformed?" And he said,
22:06"Oh, I know. I know."
22:08And they said, "Well, what happened?"
22:10And he said, "I ate too big a
22:11breakfast."
22:15That That is totally what he said.
22:18And that was us at swimming. And we go
22:20into
22:21Atlanta. And in 7 days we won three gold
22:23medals.
22:24With a woman who'd been an international
22:26swimmer for 12 years and had never
22:28gotten near a final.
22:30And the Irish nation are thinking this
22:31is the most brilliant thing they've ever
22:33seen.
22:34She was articulate.
22:35Um she was quite nice-looking in a way.
22:38She
22:42She gave um
22:45She gave her post-match or post-swim
22:47interviews in in English and in Gaelic,
22:51which like about
22:531% or less than one by I don't know what
22:56the percentage is left. I mean, a
22:58a fraction of 1% of the Irish population
23:00could do an interview in Gaelic and she
23:02could. I mean, she was a dream if she
23:05was clean.
23:06And she was a complete nightmare if she
23:08wasn't. And she wasn't.
23:11And there was like three journalists who
23:12decided, "Sorry, I'm not buying this."
23:15Uh Paul Kimmage, Tom Humphreys were the
23:16other two and I was the third. And I was
23:18really pleased. But that was a really
23:20difficult one because my kids were going
23:22out meeting their friends. And when I
23:24got back from the Olympics, I got lots
23:26of from the kids, "Oh, Dad, you know, my
23:29friends said their parents are really
23:30disappointed in you what you've written
23:32about Michelle Smith." And that was a
23:34real difficult one because the Irish
23:36nation fell in love with her. I mean,
23:3750% of the population were getting up at
23:402:00 in the morning to watch swimming, a
23:43sport they had never watched in their
23:44lives.
23:4550% is a lot of people to watch
23:48swimming. But it's interesting because I
23:50think the reason why I bring that up is
23:52that what that is to me is what I call
23:54an a narcotic narrative. It's something
23:56that the the community or the population
23:57or the or the want to hear. They want to
23:59believe that Michelle Smith is a
24:01champion. They wanted to believe Lance
24:03Armstrong is a champion because it
24:04serves their needs as much as anything
24:06else. And so for someone to uh you know,
24:09to to upset that party and say, "Well,
24:11hang on a sec. You You can have your
24:13dream, but the reality is that they're a
24:15cheat." Uh you know, you're you're
24:17messing with their fix and they don't
24:18want that.
24:19Yeah, totally. I mean, uh William Butler
24:21Yeats, the poet, had a line about this,
24:23you know, and it's so true.
24:25Um that love poem where there's a line
24:27in it which says, "Tread softly because
24:29you tread on my dreams."
24:31And the Irish nation would have been
24:33saying to us, the guys who were writing
24:35badly of Michelle Smith, "Tread softly
24:37because you're treading on our dreams."
24:39And we were treading on their dreams.
24:40They thought this was the most beautiful
24:41thing, the underdog Irish girl beating,
24:44you know, the tall, even better-looking
24:46American
24:48uh
24:49swimmers who were the big swimmers that
24:51Michelle Smith was beating. And um
24:54it was yeah, it was a very difficult to
24:56stomach story uh for the for the Irish
24:58um population. It was like they were
25:00having this fantastic parade and we were
25:02peeing all over it.
25:04But in the end you were vindicated as
25:05you were with Lance. So,
25:07that must have given you a lot of
25:09satisfaction or how did you feel about
25:11it after that? Well, the legacy of that
25:12was that writing about Armstrong was
25:14very easy after you'd written about
25:15Michelle Smith because Armstrong wasn't
25:17Irish and Irish people hadn't kind of
25:19invested in that in him
25:21in the way they'd invested in Michelle
25:23Smith. Um
25:24but it also meant that,
25:27you know,
25:28the thing about it is I remember
25:31somebody once saying, "It doesn't matter
25:32who does a good performance, you have to
25:34applaud it."
25:36Even if it's your enemy, even if it's
25:37the star you don't like. If he does
25:40something that truly is worthy, you've
25:42got to acknowledge it as worthy. And my
25:45argument would be that well, if you
25:48accept that, you equally have to accept
25:50that if you see something that doesn't
25:52look right to you, that doesn't actually
25:55make you emotionally
25:57on their side, you're thinking, "This
25:59doesn't seem right." Well, you have to
26:01say you don't think it seems right.
26:03You know, if you think it's wrong,
26:05you've got to stand up for for that
26:07point of view.
26:08Tell us about your first encounter with
26:10Lance Armstrong cuz you couldn't have
26:11known when you met him that your lives
26:13would become so intertwined. Or did you
26:15have some sense of that at the time?
26:16No, no sense of it really. I mean, um
26:20after I'd gone on my Sean Kelly crusade,
26:22I did fall in love with cycling a bit
26:24and I especially fell in love with the
26:25Tour de France.
26:27I think anybody who's ever been on it
26:29can get hooked on the tour. It's a It's
26:31a kind of a strange cultural thing to go
26:33around France for 3 weeks, 3 and 1/2
26:36weeks. Even like by the time you
26:38you actually join up with the race and
26:40leave, it's actually 4 weeks because you
26:42you go there on Tuesday and you you come
26:44back on the Monday after the race. So,
26:46it's 4 weeks.
26:47And it's like this pilgrimage around
26:49France. And I'd done it since 19, well,
26:53'82 was my first. I was there for 2
26:55weeks of '83 and then for the next 10
26:58for the entire tours. So, it'd been
27:00going on for over 10 years and I
27:03got this thing
27:04where I I wanted to write a book about
27:06the tour.
27:07And I had this really grandiose notion
27:10that I was going to be like some
27:11latter-day Geoffrey Chaucer writing the
27:13Canterbury Tales.
27:15You know, where you know, Canterbury
27:17Tales was the pilgrimage or religious
27:19pilgrimage that went on and and Chaucer
27:22had all these people tell stories, you
27:24know, on the route.
27:26And I thought, "Well, the Tour de France
27:28is a pilgrimage. I'll interview 13
27:30people on the way. They'll tell me their
27:32stories.
27:34I'll put their stories together and
27:36we'll have the story of the Tour de
27:37France." And
27:40I wanted the first chapter to be about
27:42some kid riding the race for the first
27:44time. This was 1993. I looked up the
27:48the neo fights riding the race. And
27:50Armstrong's name stood out. He was 21,
27:53the youngest rider in the race.
27:55He spoke great English as a Texan.
27:57And and that was a big factor for me.
27:59Uh and he had a good record as an
28:01amateur. So, I picked him out, asked him
28:04would he do the interview. Yes, he
28:05would. I met him on the first rest day
28:07in a lovely hotel outside Grenoble and
28:10we spoke for over 3 hours.
28:12And I loved the guy.
28:14Just really thought,
28:16you know, this is somebody you're going
28:17to be is going to make a real
28:19impression.
28:21But I would have said that was wholly
28:22positive.
28:23But the thing about Lance is that
28:27he does have a hell of a lot of
28:28charisma. If you were sitting here and
28:32you were kind of asking him questions he
28:33wanted to be asked and you were being
28:36relatively okay with him,
28:38I guarantee you
28:40he could charm you. He could mesmerize
28:42you. He really had and ran and has still
28:45got a very kind of a character can be
28:47very charismatic. And that's how I found
28:50him. And I felt like, you know, pathetic
28:52sports writer really who who thought,
28:55"This is the guy the world is going to
28:56hear about. And when he gets close to
28:58the top, I'm going to be saying, 'You
29:01know, when Lance was in his first tour,
29:03I interviewed him for 3 and 1/2 hours.
29:05Kind of knew him before anybody knew
29:07him.'"
29:08I mean, I know, pathetic, but that's how
29:09sports writers are. That's what we like
29:11to say. You know, we're the guy who
29:13stood beside the champion. And um and I
29:16came away from that thinking, "We're
29:18going to hear about this guy." And we
29:19were, but in different circumstances cuz
29:21he got sick.
29:22Uh as we know, prior to that time he was
29:25a he was a modest cyclist in in the
29:27peloton. He wasn't a superstar. He was a
29:29I I I know I would disagree, Francis. I
29:31think he was a he was an excellent
29:33one-day racer. And he could have been
29:35one of the best I mean, at that time he
29:36was one of the best in the world as a
29:38one-day guy. But he never really climbed
29:40the high mountains. He wasn't really a
29:42time triallist. So, therefore, you
29:43couldn't consider him for the tour. He'd
29:45ridden it four times, best place 36th. I
29:48mean, in every mountain stage, the
29:49closest he ever got to the winner on a
29:51mountain stage was 8 minutes behind. And
29:54mostly he was 20 minutes behind, 26
29:55minutes behind, just one of the guys who
29:57could never compete in the tour. So,
30:00then when he comes back
30:01after cancer and he's completely
30:03transformed,
30:05my argument would be you'd need to be
30:06completely blind not to see that
30:09something has happened here, something
30:11that needs to be explained. So, 1999
30:14after the uh the disgrace of the Festina
30:17revelations of 1998 when uh the Spanish
30:20authorities finally put the clamps on uh
30:22Festina and uh there was those
30:24extraordinary scenes. You might remember
30:25them of cyclists getting off their bikes
30:27and protesting as if there was some sort
30:29of uh outrage being inflicted upon them.
30:32They could just continue their circus if
30:33they wanted to. They called it the Tour
30:35of Renewal in 1999. And and Lance
30:37Armstrong was central to all that. But
30:39you write about it in the book about one
30:40of those fork in the road moments that
30:42that riders and journalists have. There
30:44was a particular stage and a particular
30:46climb where you were in the room with a
30:48bunch of journalists and Lance took off
30:50up the hill like he'd never done before.
30:53And there was a collective intake of
30:55breath within the the uh the traveling
30:57pack. There was even laughter and
30:58derision of those cynic cynical enough
31:00to understand what was going on. But at
31:02that moment, the people in that room had
31:04to choose
31:05what side of the fence they were going
31:07to be on. Yes. Yeah. So, where were you
31:09that day? Was it Yeah, it was in the
31:10press room. And it was the it was the
31:12first mountain stage to Sestriere. And
31:14there was the leaders up the road and
31:16then Lance took off.
31:17And he overtook them. And he just went
31:19past them. I remember Richard Virenque
31:21was speaking. He was the top like
31:23climber at the time, a complete doper
31:25with the Festina team. And he said Lance
31:27passed him like Lance was on a
31:28motorbike.
31:30And that's how it looked. And you know,
31:33I remember his lips were pursed. I mean,
31:35there was not his his mouth wasn't open
31:37gasping for oxygen or anything like
31:39that. He just went up that mountain like
31:41s- turbocharged. And we're in the press
31:44room and a lot of journalists were
31:45looking and pointing and kind of, you
31:47know, nodding their heads, you know,
31:49bloody hell. How could you believe that?
31:51That was their expression.
31:53And I think there was a significant
31:55amount of journalists who felt that.
31:58And if you read L'Équipe, the French
32:00newspaper that covered the race, you
32:01know,
32:02seven or eight pages every day,
32:05they were completely disbelieving. They
32:08did not believe in Lance Armstrong. Lots
32:10of people didn't. But by the time the
32:12race ended, which was like another 2
32:14weeks later,
32:15lots of people had changed their view
32:17because it was such a good story. And um
32:20and if I could uh indulge myself a
32:23little bit here because
32:25there's an important point that that I
32:27would make in relation to why I reacted
32:29the way I did. I come to that '99 tour
32:32as quite a different person. I mean,
32:34Francis said about the Festina scandal,
32:35that opened our eyes. We've talked about
32:37that. But um Michelle Smith was another
32:40big factor in how I saw things. Um but
32:44there was a a year before Michelle Smith
32:46kind of happened in Atlanta.
32:48Our eldest our eldest boy, John, who was
32:5012 years of age, died in an accident. He
32:53was struck by a car while coming home
32:54from a football match on his bicycle and
32:56he was killed instantly. And and as a
32:59family, we decided that what we wanted
33:01to do, because we'd five other kids, was
33:04always talk about John. Never was he
33:07going to be some skeleton that we were
33:09afraid to take out of the cupboard. Um
33:12so, one of the things I wanted to do was
33:14I wanted to speak to everybody I could
33:16who could tell me little things about
33:17John. And the most interesting story I
33:20heard was from
33:21a woman called Brid O'Toole, who had
33:23been John's teacher when he was in
33:25year I think it was about fourth class
33:28or fifth class, which would have been
33:30meant that he was either nine or 10
33:31years of age. And Mrs. Toole had been
33:34reading the story, she told me, of the
33:36nativity 3 weeks before Christmas. You
33:38know, Mary and Joseph, they come from
33:40Galilee, they go to Bethlehem, they're
33:42turned away from the all the inns and
33:43they end up in a stable. And baby Jesus
33:46is born and the three shepherds come to
33:48pay their respects to the new baby and
33:50the three wise men come and they bring
33:52gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
33:54And then Mary and Joseph go back to
33:56Galilee where they lived. And they lived
33:58a very modest life because
34:01they didn't have very much. And Mary and
34:03Joseph and Joseph was just a humble
34:05carpenter.
34:06And John's hand goes up.
34:08And the teacher said, "Yes, John."
34:11And he says, "Teacher, you said that
34:13Mary and Joseph had nothing and they
34:15lived a very modest life. What did they
34:17do with the gold that the three wise men
34:20brought?"
34:23And
34:24Mrs. Toole said,
34:26"John, I've been reading this story for
34:2833 years
34:30and nobody has ever asked me this
34:32question.
34:33And the honest answer is I don't know."
34:36And when I heard that, I thought, "Wow."
34:40I said, "There is journalism in one
34:43question.
34:44That's what you do. You ask the obvious
34:46question. You might look like an idiot.
34:48People might laugh at you. But if it
34:51doesn't make sense to you, don't just
34:53sit there silently accepting." And I I
34:56went up We lived in a little rural part
34:59of Ireland in Westmeath and I went up to
35:01my neighbors um Jean Cleary Martin and
35:03I'd completely forgotten this. She said
35:05a week after John's funeral, we were in
35:08our kitchen
35:09and you you told me the story about what
35:12Mrs. Toole had told you. And you said
35:15that from that day forward you were
35:17going to have that as the mantra of your
35:19journalistic life, that you were always
35:21going to ask that question. And I do
35:23feel that that I kind of owed it to John
35:26and his memory to be that kind of
35:27journalist. So, when I turned up at the
35:30'99 Tour de France, there's Michelle
35:32Smith is there, the the Festina scandal
35:34is there, but there's also that little
35:36lesson I'd learned from John about
35:39asking the obvious question. So, when
35:41Armstrong suddenly transformed himself
35:43into this utterly dominant cyclist, I am
35:46the guy who's saying, "Wow, this is
35:48going to take a lot of explaining." So,
35:50Lance,
35:51"What do you say about doping?" we said.
35:53And Lance said,
35:55"Well, there was there was a number of
35:57journalists around him. He said, 'You
35:58journalists need to understand one
35:59thing. First,' he said, 'I'm just going
36:02to address this question once.
36:04And I will never address it again. And
36:06the second thing is
36:08you guys have to accept that the story
36:11has changed now.'"
36:13He said, "Cycling is no longer like it
36:14was in the past. It's all changed. And
36:17what you need to do as a group, you
36:19journalists, is fall in love with
36:21cycling again. Because it's a great
36:24sport with great champions."
36:26And I'm there saying,
36:28"Lance, this doesn't convince me that
36:30all you guys are clean again." And I was
36:33skeptical from day one on that tour. And
36:37by the time Sestriere happened, which
36:38was like 10 days into the race,
36:41I'm completely disbelieving.
36:43I had no evidence, but a deep gut
36:46instinct. But by the time the tour ends,
36:49which is, you know, it's 3 weeks, last
36:51day of the tour, I write a line in the
36:53Sunday Times that says,
36:55"There are times when you should applaud
36:57the champion. There are other times when
36:59you'd be better keep your hands by your
37:01sides.
37:02And today is a day to keep your arms by
37:04your sides because
37:0627-year-old Texan will write it right
37:08down the Champs-Élysées
37:10in the yellow jersey.
37:12What we need is not acclamation for a
37:15new champion, but an inquiry."
37:19And that unleashed an unbelievable hell.
37:21It did because the other aspect to all
37:23of that you write about is the omertà,
37:25as you call it, within cycling, within
37:27the peloton, but within the culture of
37:28cycling as well that you you'd sort of
37:30like stood outside the tent and pissed
37:32in, so to speak. Yes. Uh and that was
37:34very powerful and and it damaged a lot
37:36of people. And Christophe Bassons, who
37:37who's written his own book about his
37:39experience, was one of those brave
37:41enough within that peloton to to speak
37:43out.
37:43Yeah.
37:43But explain to people how that culture
37:45worked, that culture of of threat and
37:48intimidation and rewarding those
37:49supplicants who would actually go along
37:51with the story.
37:52mean, it was staggering. I mean, the
37:53mafia couldn't have worked omertà better
37:55than cycling worked it. It honestly I I
37:58I'm not saying that as a joke.
38:00I mean, Christophe Bassons was this kind
38:02of young French guy. He was, I don't
38:04know, I believe he was around the same
38:05age as Lance Armstrong, actually. And
38:07physiologically, he was like Armstrong's
38:10twin. They had the same build, they had
38:12the same kind of um physiological
38:14capacity. Their VO2 max, I mean,
38:17Armstrong's was 82, 83. Bassons' was 83,
38:2084. They were both, you know, very good
38:23athletes. Bassons maybe slightly better.
38:26Um
38:27Bassons couldn't compete in the Tour de
38:29France. His nickname in the peloton was
38:32Monsieur Propre, as in the French for
38:34Mr. Clean. And that was like a sarcastic
38:37nickname. And the peloton didn't like
38:40Bassons because he was always talking
38:42about doping in the newspapers. He was
38:44always saying that he didn't believe
38:46this sport had changed.
38:48And the French newspaper Le Parisien
38:51asked him to do a column during that
38:53Tour de France. And in his second column
38:55for Le Parisien, he wrote, "I don't
38:58believe that you can finish in the top
39:0010 in this race clean."
39:02And I'm reading this and I'm thinking,
39:06"You have a choice now to make here if
39:07you're a if you're if you're in touch
39:09with this race. You can believe
39:11Christophe Bassons who says it's still
39:12dirty. You can believe Lance Armstrong
39:14who says he's clean."
39:16Bassons was definitely the more credible
39:18character. But once he got in that
39:21peloton to to ride the race, he's
39:23getting all kinds of bullying. They're
39:25telling him he shouldn't be doing it.
39:26They're telling him all this talk is bad
39:28for cycling. It's bad for the tour. It's
39:30bad for the sport. It's bad for our
39:32sponsors, they're telling him. And then
39:34when he makes an attack, they
39:36immediately close him down. So, he can't
39:38do anything in the race. And he's he
39:40continues to talk. So, then when any of
39:43his teammates make an attack, everybody
39:45neutralizes them. So his team can
39:47achieve nothing. And then his team turn
39:49against him. And at that point, he's
39:51physic he's psychologically broken down.
39:54And even though he's physically fine, he
39:56abandons the race.
39:58Bullied into submission. And the person
40:00who bullied him most was Lance
40:01Armstrong. Like one day Bassons made an
40:04attack and Armstrong's teammate said,
40:06"Bassons gone. We'll We'll go after
40:08him." And Armstrong said, "No. Le- Leave
40:10him to me." And Armstrong took off and
40:13rode up behind him. And Armstrong says,
40:15"What are you doing?" And Bassons said,
40:18"What do you mean what I'm doing?"
40:19"All this talk about doping in the
40:21newspapers is not good for the sport."
40:23Armstrong said. Bassons said, "It's what
40:26I believe and I'm going to continue
40:27saying it." And Armstrong said,
40:30"Well, if that's what you believe, you
40:31can [ __ ] off home."
40:33And Bassons said, "Well, [ __ ] you, too."
40:35And it ended, but Bassons was
40:38kind of brutally beaten into surrender
40:41and surrendering. And it was all
40:42psychological stuff. And it was
40:44incredibly powerful. Everybody was
40:46against him. And it also happened to you
40:48though, didn't it? I mean, you were
40:49subject to a similar sort of uh bullying
40:52and a culture of intimidation within the
40:54press going and
40:56was it a case that you were also
40:59approached by Lance's lawyer and let
41:01know that there was reward for for being
41:04compliant and there was there was hell
41:05the other way. Yeah, I mean, I would
41:07never say I was bullied because I'm not
41:08a I'm not I'm not a timid character. I
41:10really can stand up for myself. Really
41:12you wouldn't pick that up. Yeah, yeah,
41:13yeah, no.
41:14Uh
41:15uh
41:16yeah, there was different phases to it.
41:17I mean, in in 2000, it was already known
41:21that I was writing bad stuff about
41:23Lance, asking lots of questions in the
41:25Sunday Times. And Bill Stapleton, his
41:27lawyer, kind of sidled up to me in the
41:29press room before the start of the of
41:31the
41:322000 tour, which was going to be Lance's
41:33second. And Bill at the time was
41:37on the ethics committee of the United
41:38States anti- United States Olympic uh
41:42committee, USOC. And Bill comes up to
41:45me, good-looking guy, young guy, kind of
41:47progressive, well-dressed. And he said,
41:49"David, Lance and I have been reading
41:51what you've been writing in the Sunday
41:52Times." And I said,
41:54I said, "Have you?" And I actually
41:56I shamefully I didn't
41:58I didn't recognize him at the time. I
41:59didn't know who he was, but as he spoke,
42:01it began to fit into place. And he said,
42:03"Yeah." He said, "Um we'll have to admit
42:05we're not impressed." And I said, "Well,
42:08I can't um I can't help you, you know,
42:10with that." He said, "Look." He said,
42:12"If you were to write take a different
42:14approach, write different stuff." He
42:16said, "There could be a lot of access to
42:17Lance."
42:19And I said, "Well, you know, that kind
42:21of deal I'm just not interested in doing
42:22that."
42:24He said, "Well, if you continue writing
42:26what you've been writing."
42:28He said, "You know, we'll be responding
42:30in some way."
42:32And I kind of now realized who he was
42:35because he's a lawyer and he's Bill
42:37Stapleton. And I say,
42:39I'm trying to seem really tough. And I
42:41say, "Bill, is Is that a threat?"
42:44And I thought that would kind of scare
42:46him. And he said, "Damn right it's a
42:48threat."
42:50And then I'm scared.
42:53And uh that's how it was, you know,
42:55then. And then, you know, anybody who
42:56traveled with me was bad news, you know,
42:59Lance you know, you only had to be
43:01associated with me. How did you feel
43:03about that though? About being
43:05made to feel like a pariah
43:07just for doing your job properly? Well,
43:09I kind of understood it, you know, I was
43:10trying to wreck what was an incredible
43:12gravy train that was delivering an awful
43:14lot of money to a
43:17a big group of people and I was
43:19threatening that. Lance Armstrong was on
43:21his way to becoming an iconic figure in
43:23the world. I mean, I saw an interview
43:25recently in the Washington Post where
43:26Lance said he never knew what he was
43:28going to do after cycling.
43:30He knew.
43:31And I'm telling you, it's it's momentous
43:33that we're here on this day.
43:35That we're here because Lance saw
43:37himself as a politician. He saw himself
43:40having a shot at the presidency of the
43:42US
43:43down the road. I'm telling you, if you
43:45think that's outrageous, look who we've
43:46got.
43:48You know,
43:50and
43:51that's where he saw himself. He saw
43:53himself going into politics. And anybody
43:56raising questions in the way that I was,
43:58you weren't just threatening his image
44:01as a fantastic bike racer, you were
44:03threatening his future career. So, you
44:06know, there's a a an Australian guy that
44:09I traveled with on the tour, Rupert
44:10Guinness, for many years. And one night
44:13we were Rupert and I were driving back
44:15from um some stage. It might have been
44:172002 or 2003. And Rupert wanted to go
44:20into um
44:22a hotel but it was I think it was
44:24Stuart O'Grady might have been still um
44:28Stuart O'Grady, might have been still
44:29riding in the race and he wanted to go
44:31and see Stuart O'Grady. And um
44:34he went into the hotel
44:36and the US Postal was staying there.
44:38And um Johan Bruyneel, who's director
44:42sportif, saw Rupert.
44:43And he kind of
44:45followed him and they're in the
44:46corridor.
44:48And Johan
44:49pinned Rupert against the wall,
44:51basically stood him up with his finger
44:53pointing and said,
44:55"You were [ __ ] with Lance today at
44:57that press conference. We saw you
44:58sitting beside him. You know, don't
45:00think you can come in here and talk to
45:02any of our riders if you're going to
45:03associate with him." And he was like
45:05incredibly aggressive. And Rupert is
45:07mildest mannered guy you've ever met and
45:09Rupert got really annoyed. And Rupert
45:11said, "Look, David's out in the car.
45:13Come on. Go out Come out here and you
45:15tell him this. You tell him this." And
45:16and Bruyneel said, "No, no, I don't want
45:18to speak to him, but I'm telling you,
45:20you associate with him, you're dead to
45:22us. You will never get any of our riders
45:24to speak to you." And that's the kind of
45:26intimidation that was going on. I
45:28wouldn't call it bullying. I mean, they
45:30they would have said they they would
45:31have felt they were just protecting
45:32their their interests. And that kind of
45:34stuff worked with a lot of journalists
45:36because a lot of journalists couldn't
45:37afford not to be
45:39speaking and have access to the US
45:41Postal team. Uh you had some incredibly
45:44brave people that in the end helped you
45:46make the stories that you wrote in the
45:48book LA Confidential, which you
45:49published in in in French.
45:52Uh and it built the basis for for the
45:54case that eventually came against Lance.
45:56I want to talk to you about a few of
45:57those tonight as well.
45:59Um certainly Betsy and Frankie Andreu
46:01are central to that cuz they were in the
46:03room when Lance was being treated for
46:05cancer and he was openly admitting to
46:09his doctors at the time about everything
46:10that he'd taken, all the
46:12performance-enhancing drugs he'd taken.
46:13Uh and uh
46:15Betsy was prepared to witness that
46:18eventually, but it came at enormous cost
46:20to her. Tell us Tell us about Betsy and
46:22Frankie and and uh the journey that
46:24they've been on all this time with you
46:26because it's almost like that
46:28you've been in this together. Yes, um
46:31very much so. I mean, Betsy would be in
46:33in terms of,
46:34you know, do I have any heroes from all
46:37that time? Well, Betsy would be the
46:39number one hero. She was
46:41utterly and completely extraordinary in
46:43terms of her devotion to the truth. And
46:46Frankie was good. He was supportive of
46:47her. He never stopped her. But Frankie
46:50would never have done this. He would
46:51never have gone down the route he went
46:53unless
46:54Betsy had been driving him.
46:55Cuz for those who don't know, Frankie
46:56was one of Lance's old teammates and
46:58he'd been been a professional
46:59Yeah, Frankie Frankie rode with Lance
47:01from Lance's first year in the in the
47:03peloton. And they were best friends for
47:05about 6 years. And Betsy fell out with
47:08Lance, you know, they they'd had some
47:09kind of falling out about the way Lance
47:11was treating friends Frankie and Betsy
47:13made her complaints and Lance said, "How
47:15dare your wife speak to me like this?"
47:18And um
47:20And then Betsy, when Lance got cancer,
47:22Betsy and Frankie went to see him in
47:24Indiana University Hospital. And when
47:27they were in the room, two doctors come
47:28in. They're in a consulting room, not a
47:30not a bedroom.
47:32And Betsy says La- Lance, you know, said
47:34to Frankie, "Come on, you and I will
47:35leave." There was six other people in
47:37the Well, four other people in the room,
47:38six in all.
47:40And Lance said, "No, no, no need to No
47:42need to leave." And famously then the
47:45doctor said to Lance, "Have you ever
47:47used performance-enhancing drugs before
47:48your cancer?"
47:50And Lance says, "Yeah." And he named
47:51them, you know, EPO,
47:54cortisone, testosterone, human growth
47:57hormone, and anabolic steroids.
48:00And Betsy's listening to this. And she's
48:03thinking, this is like end of October
48:051996.
48:08And she and Frankie are getting married
48:10on December 31st, New Year's Eve, 2
48:12months later.
48:13And Betsy's thinking, "I'm not marrying
48:16this guy if he's doing the same as
48:17Lance." So she says to Frankie, "Come
48:19on, you and you and me outside." So they
48:21go outside in the corridor. And Betsy
48:23said, "Are you doing the same [ __ ] that
48:25he's doing?" And Frankie said, "No, no,
48:27I'm not." He lied basically because he
48:29was to basically protect his
48:31relationship. And when Betsy was
48:34horrified by what she'd heard Lance say,
48:36and when she went back to to Detroit,
48:38Dearborn, Detroit where they lived, she
48:41told her four best friends what she'd
48:42heard. She went to her local GP or
48:44doctor and said, "Look, this is what
48:46I've heard and
48:48I want you to know." So when I was doing
48:50the investigations and Betsy kind of
48:52came came to me as a potential witness
48:54against Lance, she said, "Talk to my
48:57four friends. Talk to the doctor. I told
48:59them all at the time." Her story was
49:01100% true. Lance has still never
49:03admitted
49:05that that admission took place. And the
49:07reason
49:09he will never admit that he made that
49:11admission, because what does it matter
49:12now? He's admitted everything else. He's
49:14admitted that he doped before his
49:16cancer. It's like there's nothing to be
49:18lost, you would have thought, by
49:19admitting. Except, and this will give
49:21you a sense of the corruption. And it's
49:23actually interesting and you're going to
49:24say this might be this is a far-fetched
49:26connection.
49:28But but when you think of
49:30Hillary Clinton being beaten by Trump
49:32and how it could happen.
49:35I've always felt, and I think the
49:37evidence points overwhelmingly to this,
49:39and please, if there's anybody here on
49:40social media or working with me, don't
49:42mention this in print, please. You'll
49:43get sued by the doctor, and you mightn't
49:45win. Um
49:47but a doctor
49:48a high up oncologist in the University
49:51of Indiana University Hospital
49:53Craig Nichols he gave an affidavit in a
49:56case that Armstrong was being sued by
49:59his by the guys who were paying him the
50:01bonuses who didn't want to pay him the
50:02bonus because he was cheating.
50:04Armstrong got an affidavit that
50:06basically said
50:08that hospital admission that Betsy
50:09Andreu referred to could never have
50:11taken place.
50:13Craig Nichols was the head oncologist in
50:15that hospital. He's the guy who would
50:16have known. He said he didn't say it
50:19didn't take place. He basically said in
50:21the affidavit, "I saw all the medical
50:23reports.
50:24If it had been admitted, it would have
50:26been in the medical reports."
50:28Two days after that
50:31affidavit was done
50:32the Livestrong Foundation made a 1.5
50:35million dollar donation to that
50:37hospital.
50:39And that's where the affidavit came
50:41from. It was basically bought for 1.5
50:44million donation given by a so-called
50:46charity.
50:47And like that's the kind of corruption
50:50that protected Lance. But Betsy, you
50:53asked me a long-winded answer. Betsy was
50:56the kind of
50:57um
50:58you've no idea how committed she was to
51:00the story. I've often referred to her as
51:02the sports editor from hell.
51:04You know, I would get a phone call from
51:05Betsy, and she'd say, "Have you seen
51:07that piece in the Seattle Times?"
51:09And I'd say, "Betsy, in Cambridge, the
51:11Seattle Times isn't a big seller."
51:14And she'd say,
51:16"It's on the internet."
51:18Oh.
51:19She says, "Yeah. There's a stuff in
51:21there about Lance. You should see it."
51:23So, I get on the case. And she'd ring me
51:25every single day.
51:27And sometimes twice, three times a day.
51:30You know, "What have you done? How have
51:32you progressed the story? What have you
51:33found out?" What was driving her? Why
51:35would I mean cuz at a certain point in
51:37most people's lives you might go,
51:38"Oh, this is too hard, and I've given my
51:40entire life to this, and I need to get
51:42on with things and accept that this is
51:44not going to happen." So, what kept She
51:46just couldn't let it go.
51:47She couldn't let it go. She Her attitude
51:49was, "Why should we let the cheats win?"
51:52You know, she just wouldn't let it go.
51:54And I mean, she was inspirational in my
51:56eyes because my attitude was, "I'm being
51:58paid to do this. Yeah. She's not being
52:00paid."
52:01She's probably paying a price for Oh,
52:02yeah, totally paying a price. She said
52:04she She said I I On the day that
52:06Armstrong went down, 22nd of October,
52:082012, I rang Betsy and we were talking
52:10during and I said, "How do you feel?"
52:11And she said, you know, I felt
52:13anticlimactic. She felt anticlimactic.
52:15And uh she said, "But you know what?
52:18She said, "Now I can leave my house, and
52:20I know when people look at me
52:23they can't say anymore, 'There she goes,
52:25the [ __ ] [ __ ] who lied about
52:27Lance.'"
52:28She said, "They can't say that anymore,
52:30and that's a big thing for me."
52:32It would be, yeah.
52:34Now, the other on the other side of
52:35that,
52:36did you get a sense from your experience
52:38about someone like Michele Ferrari? Um
52:41someone who's obviously
52:43driven by their own talents and and the
52:46and the the power of science, but
52:48with a perverted moral perspective on
52:50what they do?
52:51Well, not only Yeah, a perverted moral
52:54perspective. I mean, people who love to
52:56beat the system by cheating. There are
52:58people out there who the victory is even
53:00better if you've screwed the system. And
53:02Ferrari is one of those.
53:04is one of those, I believe. You know,
53:05wanted to you know, the doctors who ran
53:07the anti-doping, "I'm cleverer than you
53:10because I can cheat, and you'll never
53:11catch me. And it's better if I do it
53:13like that than if I could do it clean.
53:15It's like they want to screw the
53:17system."
53:17to be the smartest guy in the room.
53:18Absolutely. And morals do not come into
53:21it. But in relation just one thing about
53:23I mean, Betsy was a brilliant source for
53:25me. So was Emma O'Reilly. So was Stephen
53:27Swart. They're the three people that
53:29will always be up there right on the top
53:31for me because they put themselves out
53:34on a limb to tell tell the truth. And
53:36they were they were
53:37they were like fantastically brave. And
53:40if you give me a little bit of credit,
53:41you've got to get that give them this
53:43much credit because the bottom line is I
53:45was being paid to do it. They weren't.
53:47They were just suffering for doing it.
53:49And I was a journalist on a
53:51crusade that I actually was I was loving
53:54every moment of it. So, Emma O'Reilly,
53:56tell people about her journey cuz she
53:58worked directly with Lance.
53:59Yeah. She was
54:00And and Emma was amazing because
54:02masseuse she was
54:03She was Yeah, she was masseuse. She was
54:05like personal masseuse to Lance in '99.
54:07So, when Lance won the Tour in '99
54:11um Lance asked Emma and uh his mechanic,
54:14Julian de Vries, to come around to his
54:16hotel room.
54:17And uh they went up to his room, and
54:20Lance was there uh
54:21with his wife, and Lance opened the
54:23door, and he said, "Look, I just want to
54:25give you a gift." And he gave them both
54:27lovely Rolex watches that he'd gone out
54:28and bought on the Champs-Élysées or
54:30somewhere in France. Fantastic two
54:32fantastic watches. That's how much he
54:34thought of Emma. Now, Emma was in the
54:35team for 5 years.
54:37Uh
54:38two of those years she was Lance's
54:40personal masseuse. She saw the doping A
54:43to Z.
54:44Saw everything that went on.
54:46And in 2003
54:49she got in touch with a a journalist in
54:51England. And this is where my This is
54:54where good luck came into it.
54:57The journalist in England knew that Emma
54:59O'Reilly, who'd been personal masseuse
55:01to Lance 5 years in the US Postal team,
55:04wanted to talk.
55:06He didn't want to do the interview.
55:08He didn't want to pay the price for
55:09doing the interview.
55:09Exactly. In other words, he does the
55:11interview, Lance gets pissed off, he
55:14loses access.
55:16So, he says, "Oh, there's a guy out
55:17there, David Walsh. He'll do the
55:19interview."
55:20And would I what?
55:23She lived in um
55:24Emma lived just outside Liverpool, which
55:26is about 200 miles away.
55:28I would have walked on broken glass all
55:30that journey to have interviewed Emma.
55:32Now,
55:33I should say I had an advantage over a
55:35lot of the other journalists in that I
55:37worked for just for a Sunday newspaper.
55:39I didn't need access to Lance as much as
55:42guys who were writing for a daily
55:44newspaper or guys working for news
55:47agencies who who would have felt they
55:49needed access. I didn't need it, so it
55:52was easier for me. But I went and
55:53interviewed Emma. I interviewed her for
55:557 hours. Talk about chapter and verse. I
55:58mean, this is a woman who went to Spain
56:00and collected drugs for Lance. This is a
56:02woman who put concealer on his arms to
56:05hide the syringe marks. This is a woman
56:07who dumped his who dumped his used
56:10syringes after the stage of the Tour of
56:12Holland. This is a woman who was in the
56:15room in the night in the '99 Tour,
56:17Lance's first when he had tested
56:20positive for cortisone.
56:21And she was in the room when they
56:24concocted an alibi and decided to
56:26backdate a medical prescription to make
56:29it look that Lance was legally entitled
56:31to use this drug. So, she saw all of
56:34that. I mean, when that interchange was
56:36over between Lance and two team bosses
56:38where they were going to fabricate this
56:40medical prescription, Lance turned to
56:42Emma and said, "Now, Emma, you know
56:45enough to bring me down."
56:46She kept a diary at the time,
56:48contemporaneous notes, always valuable.
56:51She went back to her room that night and
56:53wrote in her diary, "Now, Emma, you know
56:55enough to bring me down." And she showed
56:58me that diary.
56:59And
56:59So, what made Emma want to testify?
57:02She basically got pissed off with Johan
57:05Bruyneel who treated her really badly.
57:06Lance Lance's two IC, the manager.
57:08Lance's boss, yeah, director sportif,
57:10yeah. And uh and Emma was out of the
57:13team 2 years, and she said,
57:15"You know, we've had Marco Pantani, the
57:17Italian cyclist, who's died at the age
57:19of 32. We have other cyclists dying, and
57:22nobody seems to care. The doping is
57:24going on. I'm fed up of it. I'm going to
57:26tell people what's going on."
57:28And I was a beneficiary of of Emma's
57:31honesty.
57:32She's written her own book, and she
57:35she's had a go at you in it, too.
57:36Yeah, yeah, very much so.
57:37disappointed about that? She said she
57:38felt that you threw her under the bus
57:40after after the revelations that she was
57:43very exposed cuz she would have been
57:44seen to have been a participant and a a
57:46co-conspirator in that doping as much as
57:48anything else, even though she was a
57:49whistleblower. Yeah, she was. And and
57:51and when the when Lance then sued us
57:53all, Emma was kind of involved in the
57:55lawsuits, and she was getting legal
57:56threats
57:58um from Lance. And
58:01when the story broke um when it all when
58:03the kind of [ __ ] hit the fan, I was
58:06working at the European Football
58:07Championships in in in Portugal. And
58:10then and I was getting calls from
58:11journalists like all day, every day.
58:14And Emma was feeling under siege at home
58:16in Liverpool.
58:17Press people, you know, coming to her
58:19door, all that stuff.
58:22And I should have been ringing her and
58:23saying, "Look, are you okay? Are things
58:25good?" But I wasn't. I wasn't It was I
58:27was wrong. And and I got kind of
58:29sidetracked by all the stuff I was
58:31having to field. And Emma felt I I I
58:34kind of let her down. And I think that's
58:36fair enough. It's It's justified
58:37criticism. I had no problem with it. And
58:40I still think think the world of Emma.
58:42She reconciled with Lance. I think she
58:45always liked Lance. There was always um
58:47a kind of um a you know, a a good
58:49relationship between them. She wasn't
58:52getting back at him when she was telling
58:54me all the secrets. She was getting back
58:56at the sport of cycling and at Johan
58:59Bruyneel, the the the director sportif
59:01who treated her badly. But it was
59:03incredibly
59:04st stupid of Lance to let Emma leave the
59:07team disgruntled knowing she knew all
59:10the secrets.
59:11I mean, that always had the potential to
59:13backfire, and it did. There were so many
59:15other characters we could talk about,
59:16but the one that I love, in a way, A
59:18because Dustin Hoffman Hoffman played
59:20him in the film, and it you know, you
59:22You haven't seen the film,
59:23David gets played by Chris O'Dowd in the
59:25program. But uh Dustin Hoffman plays Bob
59:27Hamman, who's the the guy that
59:29eventually calls Lance's bluff
59:32on uh on on the cheating when it comes
59:34to paying out the bonuses and you called
59:36him in the book which I love the Lionel
59:38Messi of bridge
59:39because that was what he was he was a
59:40bridge player and he he could he was
59:42great at doing risk analysis and he
59:44could spot [ __ ] from a million miles
59:45away. Tell me about Bob.
59:46Yeah, well I don't know. I I've never
59:48played the game of bridge but I'm
59:50totally you know what in Holland they
59:52teach it in secondary schools.
59:54Kids are taught to play bridge and it
59:57actually makes total sense to me that
59:59they are because the people who played
1:00:01and Bob Hamman would be one of these.
1:00:02Bob was 13 time world champion. People
1:00:05would some people would regard him as
1:00:06the greatest player to have ever played
1:00:08bridge. And um
1:00:10and Bob you know Bob has had
1:00:13Bob is a wealthy man himself because he
1:00:15founded his own company SCA insurance
1:00:18and they basically
1:00:20insured you against loss in sporting
1:00:22events. So you're having a charity golf
1:00:25day and you decide to give
1:00:27200,000 for a hole-in-one. So you go to
1:00:30Bob Hamman's company, how much do we
1:00:31have to pay you to carry that liability?
1:00:33So he assesses all the risk of that
1:00:35happening the likelihood and he gives
1:00:37you a price. Lance went to him or
1:00:39Lance's people went to him and said
1:00:41we want to pay Lance $10 million in
1:00:43bonuses over the next four years if he
1:00:45wins the tour every year. We want cover
1:00:48for that. Bob gave them cover.
1:00:50And then when Bob read LA Confidential
1:00:52the book that I brought out
1:00:54with Pierre Ballester in 2004, he didn't
1:00:57read it. Fella called John Bandy who was
1:01:00a lawyer who worked for Bob and had
1:01:01lived in France for 12 years fluent
1:01:03French speaker. He reads this book in
1:01:05French and he says boss you've been
1:01:07ripped off.
1:01:08This guy Armstrong complete cheat and
1:01:10Bob decided I've got 5 million left to
1:01:12pay Lance. I'm not paying him. And that
1:01:15started a legal process.
1:01:17And Bob was he was absolutely brilliant
1:01:19as a strategist and
1:01:21you but he was also he was also a guy
1:01:23who totally believed that cheating
1:01:25wasn't good and that because he had it
1:01:27in bridge there he'd been he'd competed
1:01:29against an Italian team who had a way of
1:01:32touching their feet under the table to
1:01:33convey what they were doing and Bob
1:01:36wasn't having cheating. He just thought
1:01:38totally wrong. So we had this whole
1:01:41process in in in Texas in 2006. It went
1:01:44on for four weeks the the legal case Bob
1:01:47lost. Not only did he have to pay the
1:01:49did he have to pay the 5 million but he
1:01:51had to pay an extra 2.5. So instead of
1:01:54paying the five he paid 7.5 but Bob
1:01:57there's a brilliant scene in the in the
1:01:59film where Bob is walking out of the
1:02:01court and Bill Stapleton the lawyer who
1:02:05threatened me five years before
1:02:08he comes up alongside Bob and Bob turns
1:02:10in in the film Dustin Hoffman stretches
1:02:13out his hand and said he said well done
1:02:16uh Bill you know your boy won today.
1:02:21And Bill Stapleton says Bob it's it's
1:02:23nice of you to be so gracious about it.
1:02:26And
1:02:27Bill's and Bob Hamman said no problem
1:02:29Bill. He said but
1:02:31one thing I would say to you he said
1:02:33lying under oath it's not the same as
1:02:35telling little white lies to
1:02:37journalists.
1:02:39And I thought that was so true because
1:02:41this would come back to to haunt
1:02:42Armstrong. Every time you see a clip of
1:02:45Lance lying under oath it's in the Bob
1:02:47Hamman process.
1:02:49And of course
1:02:50once
1:02:51federal authorities in the US got
1:02:54evidence from Floyd Landis and others
1:02:56that Lance was a doper, they know
1:02:58there's this legal process in Texas
1:03:00where Lance has put his hand on the
1:03:01Bible and said I never doped and then
1:03:04all this evidence comes out that he did
1:03:06dope. So of course the authorities are
1:03:08all over it but Bob Hamman you're right
1:03:10to kind of pick him out
1:03:12because he's a fantastic character and I
1:03:15kind of I loved I mean Bob Bob told me
1:03:18and I I don't know if any of you play
1:03:20bridge but Bob said to me he said all my
1:03:23life I've had rich guys come to me
1:03:26really rich guys and say
1:03:28I'll give you 5 million to go and play
1:03:30poker.
1:03:31You don't have to put in a up a penny.
1:03:33We'll put up the 5 million.
1:03:36Any profits you make we split 50/50.
1:03:39And I said Bob
1:03:40easiest thing in the world. Why wouldn't
1:03:42you do it?
1:03:44And he said if if you've played bridge
1:03:47you could never play poker.
1:03:49You know you just couldn't do it. He
1:03:51said it's like so mind numbingly boring.
1:03:56And bridge is such a challenge. You know
1:03:59and I just thought the the money didn't
1:04:00interest him but you know in the end
1:04:03Lance had to pay Bob Hamman back 12
1:04:05million. So Bob got all his money back
1:04:07in time and that's a little and that's
1:04:09the wonderful part. That's what kind of
1:04:10restores your faith in humanity that Bob
1:04:13in the end all he did was get his money
1:04:15back because he'd spent about 12 million
1:04:16but he got it back.
1:04:18When Lance finally
1:04:20had to come clean because he was forced
1:04:22to, how did it make you feel? Well what
1:04:24we could do this a couple of how did you
1:04:26feel watching the Oprah interview
1:04:27because we all seen that and it was a
1:04:29sit down moment everyone tuned in to
1:04:31watch.
1:04:32How did you feel about that because I
1:04:34think reading your book you felt that
1:04:36this was actually a play by Lance
1:04:38Armstrong that went horribly wrong. Oh
1:04:40yeah. Yeah I did. I mean I could see it
1:04:43a mile off um
1:04:45in that you know when you're pursuing
1:04:47somebody like I was pursuing Lance you
1:04:50get a really good sense of what he's
1:04:51like as a person. It's it's that kind of
1:04:54you know um
1:04:56was it Lieutenant Gerard who was after
1:04:58Richard Kimball in the Fugitive and that
1:05:00years
1:05:01I'm I'm dating myself now remembering
1:05:04this but Gerard would have known what
1:05:07Kimball was like Kimball would have
1:05:08known what Gerard was like and
1:05:11I felt I knew what Lance was like
1:05:13and when it came to all this evidence
1:05:16had been amassed by United States
1:05:18Anti-Doping Agency and they put it out
1:05:20there.
1:05:22And it's like 26 witnesses say they saw
1:05:25Lance Armstrong doping or they knew of
1:05:27his doping first hand. 11 of the 26 were
1:05:31former teammates.
1:05:32So come on. This is overwhelming
1:05:34evidence. Nobody can deny it.
1:05:37So Lance decide I've got to come clean.
1:05:40Where will I do it?
1:05:41And he decides
1:05:43well Oprah Winfrey has been a huge donor
1:05:47to my Livestrong Foundation. I've met
1:05:49her. She's an admirer of mine.
1:05:52She loves
1:05:53a good kind of
1:05:55tell-all confession.
1:05:56And a classic American redemption story.
1:05:58I throw myself at your feet Yeah. You
1:06:00right you raised me up. That's right and
1:06:02Lance
1:06:04felt that he goes on Oprah he gives her
1:06:06a world exclusive he admitting that he
1:06:08doped. He's falling from grace.
1:06:11She'll stretch out her arms and break
1:06:13his fall.
1:06:14And she'll put her arms around him and
1:06:16she will say there are more important
1:06:18things in life Lance than taking drugs
1:06:21and you've done
1:06:22the more important things. That's how he
1:06:25felt it would go.
1:06:26So he decides to do the interview.
1:06:29And he doesn't realize because he really
1:06:31hasn't done his research on Oprah
1:06:32Winfrey.
1:06:34Oprah Winfrey is
1:06:36she's been described and it hasn't been
1:06:37disputed. She's been described as the
1:06:39first black billionaire.
1:06:42Not the first black female billionaire
1:06:45the first black billionaire.
1:06:47She came from this really difficult
1:06:49family background. She had a child at
1:06:51the age of 15 lost a child lost a child
1:06:54and then had appalling things happen in
1:06:56her very early life. She went working
1:06:58for a local radio station as a kind of a
1:07:01morning show person did brilliantly
1:07:04and her career then became went into
1:07:06orbit.
1:07:07And what Lance didn't realize is that
1:07:10this woman is just an outstanding
1:07:12journalist. She might be a big world
1:07:14celebrity. She might be this she might
1:07:16be that but basically the reason she
1:07:19succeeded is she's an un-
1:07:23like an uncannily brilliant interviewer
1:07:25and she understands people.
1:07:27And she isn't always easy on people even
1:07:30though she's empathetic with everybody.
1:07:34Oprah decided okay Lance I'll do the
1:07:36interview.
1:07:38It's set up.
1:07:39And then Oprah gets her people
1:07:41to ring people like me.
1:07:44So a woman called Jenna I forget her
1:07:47name like a Polish name Kapetanakis or
1:07:49something like that. Kapetanakis calls
1:07:51me up
1:07:52and she said can we speak about Lance
1:07:54Armstrong and I said yeah of course.
1:07:56She introduced herself. She told me I'm
1:07:57senior producer for the Oprah Winfrey
1:07:59show.
1:08:00And she asked me loads of questions
1:08:02about Lance.
1:08:03And I could see she was like top
1:08:05journalist all her instincts were
1:08:07journalistic.
1:08:08So when I sat down to watch
1:08:11Oprah's interview with Lance I wanted to
1:08:13see had the stuff because they rang
1:08:16Betsy Andreu they rang Greg LeMond and
1:08:20they would have said similar things what
1:08:21I was saying. So when I watched the
1:08:23interview I wanted to see
1:08:25was Oprah had she had she taken on board
1:08:28the kind of information I'd given and
1:08:29she totally had.
1:08:32That is still the best interview. Lance
1:08:34has done tons of interviews since then.
1:08:37Not one of them not one of the
1:08:39interviews since then has come near
1:08:42getting as much from him as she got in
1:08:45that very first interview. To me it's a
1:08:47classic piece of
1:08:49brilliant journalism and what what Oprah
1:08:52didn't do
1:08:53is she didn't engage with Lance
1:08:55emotionally.
1:08:56She was quite detached. She was
1:08:58courteous. She asked the questions in a
1:09:00very civil way
1:09:02but she never
1:09:03really reached out and gave him that
1:09:06emotional connection that would have
1:09:08broken his fall. She she just didn't do
1:09:10it and he kind of immediately regretted
1:09:13doing that interview. He he started then
1:09:15denying what he had said on Oprah like
1:09:17she said to him at one point in the
1:09:19interview
1:09:20were you a bully?
1:09:22And she asked it in a way that said
1:09:25we both know the answer to this Lance,
1:09:27so don't don't mess around with me. He
1:09:29said, "Yes I was a bully." And then 2
1:09:32weeks later he did an interview with
1:09:34Texas Monthly a magazine in Dallas based
1:09:36magazine and he said, "By the way, I
1:09:38just want to say I said on Oprah Winfrey
1:09:39I was a bully. I was wrong. I'm not a
1:09:41bully."
1:09:43And of course the cat was out of the bag
1:09:45anyway. But that was a to me that was a
1:09:48a terrific interview and reflected
1:09:50incredibly well on Oprah Winfrey. Give
1:09:52you a sense of satisfaction? Yeah, a
1:09:54bit. I mean it was very flattering
1:09:56because she said to him towards the end
1:09:57of the interview, "Would you apologize
1:09:58to" Well, Lance said he would apologize
1:10:00to this person, this person, this
1:10:01person, this person. And Oprah says, "I
1:10:03know somebody you won't apologize to."
1:10:06And she said, "Would you apologize to
1:10:07David Walsh?"
1:10:09And he kind of goes back in his chair
1:10:11and says, "Oh," he says, "that's a good
1:10:12question."
1:10:14And she said, "Who's pursued you for 13
1:10:17years? Who wrote articles in The Times?
1:10:18Who wrote books? Will you apologize to
1:10:20him?"
1:10:21And again he realized he was under
1:10:23pressure. He said he said,
1:10:25"Yeah," he said, "I would apologize to
1:10:27David."
1:10:28Not to open here.
1:10:30Are you joking?
1:10:33Well,
1:10:34he's Well, we'll take we'll go to the
1:10:35floor and take some questions in a
1:10:36moment. But he's still obsessed with you
1:10:38and I found this out firsthand. I don't
1:10:39know if you know this. So well when we
1:10:41finally got David to to agree to a time
1:10:43and place to come out here, I sent a
1:10:45tweet out that just said,
1:10:47um you know, "Great news for the Sports
1:10:49Writers Festival at David Walsh coming
1:10:50in November, the man who exposed and and
1:10:53helped bring down Lance Armstrong coming
1:10:55to us at Lance Armstrong coming to
1:10:56Australia."
1:10:57And within minutes he text he tweet a
1:11:01tweeted back saying, "Oh, you mean Jeff
1:11:02Novitzky?" He was you know, he was being
1:11:04facetious. He was talking about the USA
1:11:06drug agency agent who ran the case
1:11:08against him that forced him into a
1:11:10corner. But it was like he had this
1:11:12radar that he knew as soon as I
1:11:13mentioned your name Yeah.
1:11:15he was on top of us. Yeah. He was right
1:11:17in there. It was extraordinary. It's a
1:11:19funny thing, you know, because Lance has
1:11:20said in a number of interviews when he's
1:11:22trying to seem reasonable,
1:11:24he says,
1:11:26"Well, you know, David and I are quite
1:11:27similar people."
1:11:29How does that make you feel when he
1:11:30makes that comment?
1:11:32I say
1:11:33honestly I say, "Lance, I know what you
1:11:35mean, but there are some differences."
1:11:37And um you know, what he means is
1:11:40we we both kind of played to win. I
1:11:43wasn't going to give up until I got him.
1:11:45He wasn't going to give up until he
1:11:46ground me into the ground. And I see
1:11:48that and I get that. I wasn't going to
1:11:50quit. He wouldn't regard himself as a
1:11:52quitter. And that way
1:11:54we would have similar characteristics.
1:11:56And he would say
1:11:58that I would I would have done anything
1:12:00to bring him down.
1:12:02And I would say, "Yes, I would, but I
1:12:04wouldn't have lied." Which he would he
1:12:06would he would argue that I would have
1:12:07lied. I I would say, "Lance, I
1:12:09definitely wouldn't." But
1:12:11when he says that he kind of forgets
1:12:14that he was perjuring himself. He was
1:12:16breaking the law. He was doing he was
1:12:19doing things that really should have had
1:12:21him in prison.
1:12:22And and I don't think I was doing
1:12:24anything that would
1:12:26He's now
1:12:27and just just to to finish that sorry, I
1:12:29did invite him to come to the Sports
1:12:30Writers Festival via Twitter saying,
1:12:32"Hey, I know you've written books.
1:12:33Fiction true, but they're still books."
1:12:36I didn't get an answer to that one.
1:12:38He's now undergoing a charm offensive of
1:12:41sorts. He's got a new podcast which all
1:12:43sorts of highfalutin people turn up and
1:12:46are happy to sit down and talk to him.
1:12:47It's called The Forward if you want to
1:12:48check it out. Occasionally you do pop up
1:12:50in conversation in this in this thing,
1:12:51I'm sure you're aware.
1:12:53At what point do we forgive or do we
1:12:55allow Lance Armstrong to re-enter polite
1:12:57society and get on with the rest of his
1:12:59life?
1:13:00Or do we just do
1:13:01Well, I I would I would like to see him
1:13:03get on with the rest of his life and but
1:13:06I think he kind of I think he owes it to
1:13:08people to get on with the rest of his
1:13:10life in a
1:13:12you know, do whatever you're going to
1:13:13do, Lance, but make it relatively
1:13:14speaking low profile because you've lost
1:13:17your right to be an advocate for any
1:13:19causes. You've lost your right to kind
1:13:21of
1:13:22try to gain the public's trust.
1:13:25You know, you had that and you
1:13:27completely abused it. So you really I
1:13:30wouldn't be comfortable seeing him back
1:13:32on that stage as an advocate
1:13:34to be there though. Oh, totally.
1:13:35Totally. He would he won't be happy with
1:13:37a normal
1:13:39low profile life. That won't do it for
1:13:41Lance. He's got to be back there. The
1:13:43the thing that
1:13:45I imagine he's most struggling with now
1:13:47is the sense that he's become
1:13:49irrelevant.
1:13:50I mean in the US
1:13:52there's just very little interest in the
1:13:54in the brand of Lance of Lance
1:13:56Armstrong. In Europe it's different. You
1:13:58know, if he shows up in Europe,
1:13:59journalists are still really keen to
1:14:01interview him. There's lots of people
1:14:03who will give him time and coverage, but
1:14:06it's not like that in the US and and I
1:14:08think there's a reason for that in that
1:14:11we felt outraged by his behavior.
1:14:13Americans felt betrayed.
1:14:15And the sense of betrayal is harder to
1:14:17get over than the sense of outrage.
1:14:19What happened to all those Livestrong
1:14:20bracelets? Yeah.
1:14:21Where'd they all go?
1:14:22They've disappeared.
1:14:23did they sell? 80 million.
1:14:26And that was a dollar at a time that
1:14:28Nike were putting into his foundation.
1:14:30So every every Livestrong wristband was
1:14:34was a dollar and there was 80 million of
1:14:36them. And um
1:14:38when I was
1:14:39when I was like a bit obsessed by the
1:14:42story,
1:14:43I'd be going to America to cover the
1:14:45Masters in golf for The Sunday Times and
1:14:48I'd be
1:14:49in a queue, you know, at X-ray machine
1:14:52and the guy in front of me or four
1:14:54places front of me would have a
1:14:55Livestrong band. Guy dressed in a suit,
1:14:58briefcase, kind of very kind of
1:15:01corporate looking guy.
1:15:03And I'd sidle up to him. I'd say,
1:15:04"Excuse me, just wanted to speak to my
1:15:05friend." And the friend is a person I've
1:15:07never seen in my life until 5 seconds
1:15:09before.
1:15:10And I'd say to the guy, I said, "Look, I
1:15:12don't want to you know, you know, be
1:15:14rude or anything like that, but you're
1:15:16wearing the Lance Armstrong wristband."
1:15:18And the guy would say, "Yeah, so what?"
1:15:20And I'd say, "The guy is a complete
1:15:22fraud."
1:15:23Have a nice day.
1:15:25And the guy would look at me like I was
1:15:27some kind of alien
1:15:29or who I'd or who I'd called his wife a
1:15:31[ __ ] you know, it's like
1:15:34he, you know, he just had a look that
1:15:37said, "Please go away. I don't want to
1:15:38hear. I don't want to hear." And they
1:15:40didn't they never wanted to hear. Nobody
1:15:42ever said, "What makes you say that?"
1:15:45They just heard a kind of a European
1:15:47accent, English or Irish or wherever
1:15:49you're from, don't want to know. And
1:15:52but I couldn't stop myself. There are
1:15:54still people who don't want to know. I
1:15:55mean we have people on our Facebook page
1:15:58going, "Oh, David Walsh, he's only in it
1:16:00for the money. Wrote the book to to ride
1:16:02on the back of Lance's fame.
1:16:04There was 188 other writers in the
1:16:06peloton, but he only went after Lance.
1:16:08He was determined to bring him down.
1:16:09They were all cheating, so it's okay.
1:16:11Why why why couldn't Lance Armstrong
1:16:13just be the best of the cheaters?" How
1:16:14do you respond to that sort of pretzel
1:16:16logic when it comes to
1:16:18to explain why it mattered that that the
1:16:20pursuit of Lance Armstrong was seen
1:16:23through? Yeah, see the thing about Lance
1:16:25was he he wasn't just a cyclist and it
1:16:27wasn't just about the bike. It really
1:16:29wasn't. He he became a a global icon
1:16:33because he had recovered from cancer and
1:16:35come back to win the Tour de France. And
1:16:37his book, which was written by Sally
1:16:39Jenkins, a Washington Post journalist, I
1:16:41mean in terms of
1:16:44a talented writer applying herself to
1:16:46writing a book,
1:16:47it was an extraordinarily well-written
1:16:49book. I mean Sally Jenkins did
1:16:52a fantastic job on that book. And it
1:16:55sold, you know,
1:16:57millions of copies. And it's the kind of
1:16:59book that for years
1:17:02you heard that your granddad or your
1:17:05uncle or your aunt or your grandmom had
1:17:07been told that he or she had terminal
1:17:10cancer.
1:17:11Well, one of the things a lot of people
1:17:12did was they went out and bought Lance's
1:17:14book and they gave it to their sick
1:17:16relative or sick grandfather and said,
1:17:18"Read this book. It's inspirational."
1:17:21And they read the book and they found it
1:17:23completely inspirational.
1:17:25And if you consider that that book was
1:17:29founded on a on an unbelievably cynical
1:17:32lie.
1:17:33And the place that it had in people's
1:17:36kind of lives, I just thought that was
1:17:38an obscenity beyond belief. And the
1:17:41treatment of all those people, I mean
1:17:43there's a thing on YouTube. You can
1:17:45still see it. Lance is up on a stage
1:17:47like this
1:17:49and there's a crowd similar to this
1:17:51crowd and they're all cancer survivors
1:17:54or cancer victims cancer sufferers. And
1:17:57Lance has been asked a question about
1:17:59doping by the by the person playing
1:18:01Frances' role.
1:18:03And
1:18:04Lance says,
1:18:05"Yeah, people say I would take drugs.
1:18:09You guys
1:18:10you've been through going through what
1:18:13I've been through.
1:18:14Am I going to go to a doc now and say,
1:18:16'Doc, I want to win a bike race. Give me
1:18:18what you got.'
1:18:20Am I going to do that?" And all the
1:18:22people in the crowd are saying, "No, of
1:18:23course not, Lance." "Yeah, it's
1:18:25ridiculous this accusation that I would
1:18:27take drugs.
1:18:28You guys know what we've all been
1:18:30through here."
1:18:32And you look at that and you think, "How
1:18:34much cynicism did it take to stand
1:18:37before those people
1:18:39and
1:18:40express that lie?" And then people say
1:18:42to me,
1:18:43"But why did you pick on Lance?"
1:18:45Look, it's perfectly obvious. He wasn't
1:18:47any other cyclist. He won the race seven
1:18:49times.
1:18:50He accumulated over 200 million dollars
1:18:53in earnings from this.
1:18:55Precisely because he wasn't like any
1:18:57other cyclist. Any other cyclist winning
1:18:59the Tour de France is is earning a
1:19:00million, 2 million extra.
1:19:02Lance was earning 50 million, 100
1:19:04million extra. So he was a completely
1:19:06different case and I never had any
1:19:09doubts
1:19:10that going after him in a in a
1:19:12particular individual way was utterly
1:19:14justified because he wasn't like all the
1:19:17others. And his story certainly isn't.
1:19:19We've got time for some questions. So if
1:19:22you uh put your paw in the air, they've
1:19:23got some people at the back too who
1:19:24might want to ask some questions. We'll
1:19:26get to as many of you as possible in the
1:19:27next uh 25 half minutes, half an hour.
1:19:30Just stand up and and say your name and
1:19:31and fire away.
1:19:34Good day, David. Um
1:19:36a lot of us grew up on the voice of Phil
1:19:38Liggett um and for the whole time Lance
1:19:40was riding, even when
1:19:42sort of the story with became
1:19:45fairly evident that he was probably
1:19:46doping, Phil was his biggest supporter.
1:19:48I I was interested to know your
1:19:50relationship with with Phil and uh your
1:19:53thoughts on the way he covered it um
1:19:56and how he's handled it since. Yeah.
1:19:59Um when the movie came out the people in
1:20:01the
1:20:03promoting the movie invited Phil to a
1:20:04screening in London and I met him. And
1:20:07we had this ridiculously false
1:20:08conversation where I didn't want to be
1:20:11rude and he didn't want to be anything
1:20:13other than polite and he and he was
1:20:15saying, you know, he'd just seen the
1:20:17movie. I loved the movie. It's great.
1:20:18Blah blah blah.
1:20:20When this was going on, if I'd met you
1:20:22at the time, 2004, you were at the Tour
1:20:25de France and we were having a coffee
1:20:27and you'd said to me
1:20:29is there anybody that you really dislike
1:20:31in terms of the way they've covered
1:20:33this?
1:20:34I would have said
1:20:35two people stand above all the others.
1:20:38Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen.
1:20:40I hated them with a passion you wouldn't
1:20:43believe. Nothing
1:20:45there's nothing that anybody did that I
1:20:47felt came close to the cynicism of what
1:20:50those guys did because they were very
1:20:52important. They were forming your view
1:20:54your views on this. You know, there's a
1:20:56piece of commentary where Paul Sherwen
1:20:58says, you know, I think it was used in
1:21:00that really good documentary Stop at
1:21:02Nothing was made by Australian
1:21:03Broadcasting Corporation
1:21:06um which was a really good documentary.
1:21:09Paul Sherwen is saying, there are people
1:21:11who say they this guy dopes blah blah
1:21:13blah. You know, what he's got is great
1:21:16inner strength, greatness, great that.
1:21:18They knew
1:21:20that Lance was doping
1:21:21and they kind of willfully, you know,
1:21:25told their viewers exactly the opposite
1:21:27and I just found that incredibly hard.
1:21:29At the time I couldn't bear to on those
1:21:32Tour de Frances, I'd see Paul Sherwen
1:21:34coming down the road and I'd be going
1:21:35up. I just couldn't look at the guy.
1:21:37Same for Phil Liggett. I just didn't
1:21:39want to have anything to do with them
1:21:41because I thought they were in really
1:21:43powerful positions and they were abusing
1:21:44it.
1:21:47Could you talk about Greg LeMond and who
1:21:50was I think one of the early
1:21:52people who
1:21:54uh said that Lance could have only done
1:21:55what he did if he was doping and the
1:21:57effect it had on his life and his
1:22:00business?
1:22:00Oh, yeah. I mean, Greg was another
1:22:03source of mine. I mean, he didn't have
1:22:04any direct knowledge of Lance's doping,
1:22:06but he had conversations with Lance that
1:22:08he told me about where Lance was
1:22:10famously once said to him, "Come on,
1:22:12Greg. We all dope. You know what I mean?
1:22:14What's the big deal?" And Greg is
1:22:16saying, "I didn't dope." Come on, Lance
1:22:18is saying, "You took EPO like the rest
1:22:21of us."
1:22:22And Greg is saying, "I didn't take EPO."
1:22:25And
1:22:26and that was a really interesting
1:22:27allegation by Lance because he had to
1:22:29say, "Hold on now. Is it possible that
1:22:30Greg did take EPO?"
1:22:32Well, Greg retired in 1993 because he
1:22:35couldn't compete. That was the year that
1:22:37everybody thinks EPO became its use
1:22:39became widespread within the peloton.
1:22:41And Greg's argument was, "Suddenly
1:22:43everybody was going so fast, I couldn't
1:22:45keep up anymore." And he and he retired
1:22:47immediately. And you're right to allude
1:22:50to how Greg suffered because Greg had a
1:22:52cycling company that was very
1:22:53successful.
1:22:54And basically I know Lance has denied
1:22:57this recently, but it's absolutely true.
1:23:00Lance through his influence with Trek
1:23:03got Trek to close down Greg's Greg's
1:23:06business. And Greg went through an
1:23:08absolutely traumatic time. He lost a
1:23:10huge amount um because of the pressure
1:23:14the commercial pressure that Lance was
1:23:16able to put on him. And uh
1:23:18Greg went through a really horrific
1:23:20time. I mean, Lance called him a
1:23:23an alcoholic, he called him a drug
1:23:24addict, you know, I mean, when Lance
1:23:27decided he was going to kind of go after
1:23:29you and bring you down and and tarnish
1:23:32your reputation
1:23:33he there was no depths to which he
1:23:36wouldn't plunge and then he would go
1:23:37deeper again.
1:23:39I mean, it was it was really brutal what
1:23:41he did to Greg, but Greg has been
1:23:43vindicated now. He's the only American
1:23:45winner of the Tour de France. And that's
1:23:47a big thing to be able to claim.
1:23:49We've got some Sorry, there's a someone
1:23:52We'll come to them in a minute.
1:23:54Uh
1:23:55so, some would say that uh you know
1:23:58for Lance giving hope to to millions and
1:24:02if everyone was cheating and he's
1:24:04raising that much money that no one else
1:24:05could
1:24:07uh
1:24:08it's all for the best, you know, it's
1:24:09given a lot of people hope, it's raised
1:24:11a lot of money. He'd go back and he'd
1:24:13probably do it all again. Um could that
1:24:15be justification for his lies and in his
1:24:19own mind that you think is psychopathic
1:24:21or sociopathic or like do you think that
1:24:25maybe he feels it's justified because of
1:24:26the amount of money that he's raised,
1:24:28the amount of hope that he's given? And
1:24:30do you think that could have been why he
1:24:31continued to to lie and feel
1:24:35like he wasn't doing anything wrong?
1:24:37Yeah, I I I hadn't thought of it like
1:24:39that, but I'm sure you're right. And
1:24:41it's um you know, it's an intelligent
1:24:43way of looking at it. You know, Lance
1:24:45decided, "Okay, I am telling lies here,
1:24:47but look at the greater good. See the
1:24:49bigger picture."
1:24:51And I'm sure that that's how Lance may
1:24:53well have seen it. Uh lots of people at
1:24:56the time said
1:24:58"I don't care if he's taken
1:24:59performance-enhancing drugs. Look at the
1:25:01money his foundation is raising."
1:25:03And my argument used to be, "Well, what
1:25:05happens if the foundation actually has
1:25:08been created
1:25:09as a shield that protects him from
1:25:11scrutiny?"
1:25:13Well, then you have to look at it in a
1:25:14different way. And I used to quote um
1:25:18Al Capone um the gangster in Chicago
1:25:221920s.
1:25:23were many examples. I mean, um Pablo
1:25:25Escobar in in Medellin in the 1990s with
1:25:28with uh the city of Medellin, he built
1:25:30he basically housed and fed
1:25:32tens of thousands of people while at the
1:25:34same time running his drug company.
1:25:35That's right. I mean, there's a
1:25:37a fantastic story in the Chicago
1:25:39Tribune. You can get it online. It's a
1:25:40brilliant photograph.
1:25:42On Thanksgiving Day 1930
1:25:45in Chicago
1:25:47you have this line of people
1:25:49like
1:25:50I'd say 200 yd long, six wide, maybe
1:25:54about 1,000 people.
1:25:56Well, they're all queuing up there.
1:25:58They're kind of down and out of Chicago
1:26:00and they're all queuing up to go into
1:26:02Al's soup soup kitchen, Al Capone soup
1:26:05kitchen. He's giving them soup and a
1:26:07full meal on Thanksgiving Day.
1:26:09And he fed 5,000 people on that day who
1:26:13wouldn't otherwise have had a proper
1:26:14meal.
1:26:15And the Chicago Tribune reporter
1:26:17interviewed people in the line.
1:26:19And one of the guys in the line said
1:26:22"Al Capone has done more for this city
1:26:25than the federal government has done for
1:26:26the last 100 years."
1:26:29And
1:26:31you know, that's how people felt about
1:26:33Al Capone. It didn't mean he wasn't
1:26:35murdering people
1:26:36but it meant that the soup kitchens gave
1:26:38people a different impression of what he
1:26:41was really about. And gave him a moral
1:26:43license to do And gave him a moral
1:26:45license to do appalling things. So, the
1:26:47answer to your question basically is
1:26:49you know, I can't justify it. And and on
1:26:52a really simple level, everybody faces
1:26:54this question. Which would you rather?
1:26:57A beautiful lie or an ugly truth?
1:27:00And I've always been a believer in I'd
1:27:02rather the ugly truth truth.
1:27:05Okay, then you first.
1:27:07Thank you both for wonderful discussion
1:27:09so far. Um two quick questions.
1:27:12On that um
1:27:13I was just wondering how much grief
1:27:15or flak you got from the whole
1:27:18Livestrong movement or as a result of,
1:27:21you know, what happened
1:27:23with with the revelations that you you
1:27:24brought forward. Um and secondly, on the
1:27:27Michelle Smith thing, has she ever
1:27:29spoken about um what happened, what she
1:27:31went through and I just wonder what she
1:27:33might be doing now if you know. Yeah, I
1:27:35do. I know well. And let's take um um
1:27:38first part of your question, did I get
1:27:40flak from bad Livestrong? Not really. I
1:27:42was a bit too far away from them. I
1:27:43would have been getting flak from from
1:27:45journalists.
1:27:46Um
1:27:47I remember once
1:27:49uh being approached by a Dutch
1:27:50journalist who said to me "You know, why
1:27:53are you continuing to write about
1:27:54Armstrong?" And I said, "What do you
1:27:55mean?" And he said like, "You know I
1:27:58know. Of course they're cheating.
1:28:00They're pretty much all cheating.
1:28:02We just accept it and get on with it."
1:28:04And I my attitude is I well, I that's
1:28:06not the way I'm going to go. I can't
1:28:07accept this and get on with it. But I
1:28:09that kind of atmosphere I was getting
1:28:11like I would go to the Tour de France
1:28:13and there was like lines of cables of
1:28:15journalists.
1:28:16And where previously you'd have loads of
1:28:18people to talk to, I'd be walking up and
1:28:20down trying to find one journalist or
1:28:22two journalists who I knew would want to
1:28:24talk to me and there were very few. I
1:28:26was just a pain in the ass that they
1:28:28didn't want to have to deal with. Um
1:28:30now, Michelle Smith is really
1:28:32interesting what's happened Michelle. I
1:28:34mean, as I've said to you earlier, she
1:28:35she was a she's a bright young woman.
1:28:37She went after her her career ended
1:28:41because of a doping ban she decided to
1:28:43study law.
1:28:44She went on from there to do
1:28:47became a barrister.
1:28:48And she's now a very successful
1:28:50barrister in Dublin. She's never
1:28:52discussed her cycling cycling career her
1:28:55swimming career.
1:28:56And
1:28:58I have a
1:28:59a fantasy about Michelle
1:29:03in that I'm going to be in a witness box
1:29:05on some pretty serious charge
1:29:07and she's going to be the prosecuting
1:29:10barrister
1:29:11and she's going to say to me, "Mr.
1:29:13Walsh, can we have the truth?" And I'll
1:29:15say
1:29:16"I'll tell it if you tell it.
1:29:19We've got a question up.
1:29:22Um my question is more about sports
1:29:25writing and you've kind of mentioned it
1:29:27in your own comments about when you
1:29:29first came across Sean Kelly. And you've
1:29:32also mentioned it a little bit with uh
1:29:34Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen. But I
1:29:36wonder about the the kind of compromise
1:29:39and the difficulty that uh
1:29:41sports writers have as fans. And how
1:29:45they actually draw the line between
1:29:46being a journalist and being a fan. And
1:29:50and have you got any particular comments
1:29:52to make about that? And and it probably
1:29:54comes into
1:29:56particularly with something like the
1:29:58Tour de France where it comes across as
1:30:00most of the the sports writers that
1:30:03cover the Tour de France are actually
1:30:05fans first and then journalists
1:30:07afterwards.
1:30:08Yeah. Uh I think the question you raise
1:30:11is absolutely central to good sports
1:30:14writing. In that
1:30:16the best sports writers
1:30:18have to be journalists first, fans
1:30:20second. But that but the reason they're
1:30:22sports journalists in
1:30:24most cases is because they were fans.
1:30:27You know, it's like so many journalists
1:30:29I know they got into it because they
1:30:30loved the sport.
1:30:32And
1:30:33being a sports writer was a way of
1:30:35working in an area they wanted to work
1:30:37in. And in a way that's the wrong
1:30:39starting point.
1:30:40I used to say to journalists when I
1:30:42speak to them, "Look, your commitment
1:30:44has to be to journalism, not to the
1:30:45sport. You're not here to promote the
1:30:48sport. Although great sports writing
1:30:50effectively does does promote a sport.
1:30:53But
1:30:55it is the it's the eternal dilemma. What
1:30:57are you? Are you a are you a fan or or
1:31:00are you a journalist? And we used to
1:31:01have this expression we called them
1:31:03FWTs. They were people we looked down on
1:31:06in the press room. And an FWT was a fan
1:31:09with a typewriter.
1:31:10And we we know we know if if we're in a
1:31:13press box and and somebody scores a goal
1:31:16or does something great in a match
1:31:18and a person in the in in the press room
1:31:21cheers
1:31:22we all look at them like, you know,
1:31:24"What are you doing? We're not here as
1:31:26cheerleaders." Um but
1:31:29going back to your question and the Tour
1:31:30de France yeah, most of the guys who
1:31:32cover the Tour are fans of are fans of
1:31:34cycling who've ended up as journalists.
1:31:36And I think that's even more so the case
1:31:37now because so many
1:31:39there are so many platforms for people
1:31:41to kind of be journalists and a a lot of
1:31:43people end up there just because they
1:31:45love the sport. And to me it's the wrong
1:31:47starting point. And ultimately
1:31:52it's no good if we're if we're
1:31:54applauding or acclaiming somebody who's
1:31:56cheated. It's just
1:31:58it's that to me is the depressing part.
1:32:00Um come down here then we'll come back
1:32:01to the front. I think we've got a
1:32:02question up the back. How are you?
1:32:04Jonathan O'Doherty from Tuam, County
1:32:06Galway. How are you, David? Um
1:32:08absolutely fantastic book, Seven Deadly
1:32:11Sins. Um top book, not just
1:32:14book.
1:32:14Um my question is in connection with
1:32:17maybe a lot of people don't know here,
1:32:18but you went on uh the Late Late Show um
1:32:22and around the period of time where you
1:32:24were under a lot of ambush. It's on
1:32:26YouTube if anybody wants to
1:32:29And my question is throughout all of
1:32:31this um particularly in an age where uh
1:32:35personality tends to triumph over
1:32:38character
1:32:39how you maintained your own dignity
1:32:42and your humility uh particularly when
1:32:45you had facts in a lot of cases which
1:32:48would have won arguments hands down and
1:32:52you kind of let people um continue with
1:32:56their own beliefs uh and maintain class
1:32:59right the way along the way.
1:33:01Yeah. Um thank you very much for that.
1:33:03It's you're you're you're you're being
1:33:05extremely generous. Um
1:33:08but um the Late Late Show was a big
1:33:10Irish talk show. I mean
1:33:12the longest-running talk show in the
1:33:13world. There were times when the Irish
1:33:15nation every single person watched it.
1:33:18It was just an unbelievable thing.
1:33:19And to be honest, it was a really big
1:33:21deal, wasn't it, to be invited? Huge.
1:33:23And in uh I think it was about 2001 I
1:33:26got invited on with Stephen Roche, who
1:33:28was Ireland's only winner of the Tour de
1:33:29France. And we're sitting like you know,
1:33:32first they said, "David, we'll put you
1:33:34in the crowd. We'll talk to Stephen and
1:33:35we'll ask a couple of questions." I'd
1:33:37written an article saying that he was a
1:33:39doper um based on
1:33:41based on um reports that had that had
1:33:44come out of Italy.
1:33:45And um
1:33:47the kind of interesting part was that I
1:33:50was his official biographer. I'd written
1:33:52two books with Stephen Roche and we were
1:33:54supposedly great friends.
1:33:56But my attitude was just because we were
1:33:58friends
1:33:59doesn't mean I close my eyes to the fact
1:34:02that he's it now turns out he was
1:34:04doping.
1:34:05And uh so I write the story and Ireland
1:34:07was outraged as a country. Lots of
1:34:09people believed me. Most people didn't.
1:34:11I get invited on the Late Late Show.
1:34:14And the the anchor thinks Stephen Roche
1:34:17is God.
1:34:18And he thinks
1:34:20like I'm a piece of rubbish on the sole
1:34:22of his foot that he's had to have on his
1:34:23show.
1:34:24And
1:34:25the discussion goes on for
1:34:28I don't know more than 20 minutes. And
1:34:30it's on YouTube and it's really funny
1:34:32because I'm trying to kind of politely
1:34:33say the guy's a doper. Stephen is trying
1:34:35to argue. They go to the crowd and the
1:34:38audience and of course there's a guy in
1:34:40the audience who's a doctor who says I'm
1:34:42a com- I'm a complete charlatan and
1:34:44Stephen Roche is a hero of his. And then
1:34:46they go to these this old guy who makes
1:34:49an impassioned
1:34:50kind of statement. And the the anchor
1:34:52doesn't say this is Steven's father.
1:34:56And his mom was there. I think she might
1:34:58have spoken as well and they they defend
1:35:00Stephen.
1:35:01And it was quite a difficult kind of
1:35:0520 minutes for me or however long it
1:35:06went on. But I remember walking out and
1:35:08feeling like a total pariah because I'd
1:35:11been telling the Irish nation that their
1:35:12Tour de France winner was actually a
1:35:13fraud.
1:35:15And I
1:35:17I I went to reception and I said, "Do
1:35:19you know the people who call into the
1:35:21show to give you their opinions?"
1:35:23I said, "Who takes those calls?" And she
1:35:25said, "We do at this desk."
1:35:27And I said, "Did you have many calls
1:35:29about my discussion with Stephen?"
1:35:31And she said, "A huge amount." I said,
1:35:33"What constitutes a huge amount?" And
1:35:35she said, "We had 400 round just around
1:35:37400 calls."
1:35:38And I said, "How did they divide up
1:35:40between pro and and contra?"
1:35:43And she said, "50/50." About half the
1:35:46people who called thought you were right
1:35:48and half the people thought he was
1:35:49right. And I remember I was on a total
1:35:52high.
1:35:53No. I just thought 50% believed me.
1:35:56Which was about 46% more than I
1:35:58expected.
1:36:02Uh hi guys. I believe you were saying
1:36:04before, David, that you went to the Rio
1:36:05Olympics. Yes.
1:36:07I might have missed something, but I'm
1:36:09surprised that I've only heard of one
1:36:11person that's been caught doping during
1:36:13the Rio Olympics. Which
1:36:15being a cynic it can't be true.
1:36:18Yeah, well it certainly isn't true that
1:36:19only one person was doping at the Rio
1:36:21Olympics, that's for sure. Um
1:36:23the testing there the testing there we
1:36:25now know was rubbish. Yeah. You know
1:36:29and Rio was running out of money as the
1:36:31Olympics were happening. I mean, people
1:36:33say to me, "Did you enjoy Did you enjoy
1:36:35the Olympics?"
1:36:39And this is going to sound terrible
1:36:40given how privileged my position is to
1:36:41be able to go to the Olympics and have
1:36:43somebody else pay.
1:36:45The thing I enjoyed most about my time
1:36:47in Rio was
1:36:48I went and met a journalist uh an
1:36:51investigative journalist who worked in
1:36:52Rio. Brilliant investigative journalist.
1:36:55He'd been doing stories on the head of
1:36:57the Olympics who'd been corrupt and had
1:36:59been giving big contracts to
1:37:02relatives of his.
1:37:04And because he had done that, of course,
1:37:06Rio wouldn't accredit him to go to the
1:37:08Olympics. And he basically took me into
1:37:11a favela
1:37:12and showed me how this favela had been
1:37:14preserved by a Catholic bishop
1:37:17in this particular suburb that had been
1:37:19gentrified.
1:37:20And there's like 5,000 people living in
1:37:23a an area about half the size of a
1:37:26soccer pitch.
1:37:27And it's now a really plush
1:37:30affluent area of um Rio.
1:37:33And he told me the history of it. And he
1:37:35told me the kind of journalism that he
1:37:36was doing. And I found that the most
1:37:38interesting part of my time. I really
1:37:40didn't like being there. I think it was
1:37:42an obscenity to hold the Olympics in
1:37:44Brazil. All the money they've spent on
1:37:46that all the promises that were made to
1:37:48the
1:37:49the huge amount I think it's 2 million
1:37:51people who live in favelas. Like it's a
1:37:53significant number of the Rio
1:37:55population, maybe 25% who live in
1:37:57favelas. They were told that they would
1:37:59get this, they would get that. They got
1:38:01nothing. They have this bay that they
1:38:02were going to clean up because it's
1:38:04horribly polluted. Never happened. What
1:38:07you've got is huge stadia
1:38:09many of which now will be pretty
1:38:11redundant. New roads built in the area
1:38:14where the stadia were which was in the
1:38:15area that all the middle class people
1:38:17live. It's just a horrible
1:38:20exercise in making the kind of
1:38:22privileged elite more privileged. And
1:38:24you know, you couldn't have enjoyed the
1:38:26Olympics if you had a social conscience.
1:38:28Never mind a doping conscience.
1:38:30We have a question up. Uh hi David. Hi
1:38:32Francis. Uh thanks for a wonderful
1:38:34discussion, but got a a question about
1:38:37journalism. And uh journalists seemingly
1:38:40becoming, I guess, more celebrities
1:38:42nowadays and it's uh
1:38:44I suppose it's becoming increasingly
1:38:46more about journalists and less about
1:38:48the story and what you take on what I
1:38:51take on that was, sorry, and uh how
1:38:53comfortably that sits with you. I know I
1:38:56guess my take on it is we see it a lot
1:38:58in this town, particularly when we talk
1:39:00about AFL, and it's increasingly about
1:39:02which journalists wrote what and they
1:39:03all talk about who wrote what and and
1:39:05all that sort of stuff. I suppose for
1:39:07yourself um you've come into I guess
1:39:10some sort of celebrity with your
1:39:12takedown of the king I suppose Lance and
1:39:15and how how comfortably that that sits
1:39:17with you.
1:39:18Yeah,
1:39:19I think point you make is perfectly
1:39:20valid.
1:39:22In a general sense I'm totally
1:39:24uncomfortable with it.
1:39:26But
1:39:27it's a pretty difficult situation then
1:39:29when say for example
1:39:31you written this book and a film company
1:39:34come along and say we'd like to adapt
1:39:35your book into a film. What do you do?
1:39:37You say
1:39:38um
1:39:40no because that's going to bring a
1:39:41degree of celebrity or do you say this
1:39:44sounds fun and they're going to pay me
1:39:47more than my newspaper is going to pay
1:39:48me you know and I don't have to do
1:39:50anything except take the money. Well
1:39:54I got seven kids all of them went to
1:39:56university.
1:39:59I had virtually nothing so of course I
1:40:01say yes and I do it and bit of celebrity
1:40:03comes with that.
1:40:05And it comes with the huge danger.
1:40:07And I totally
1:40:09agree that there's far too much I in
1:40:11journalism now and journalists have
1:40:13become
1:40:15almost as much the story as the story
1:40:17they write.
1:40:19It should be
1:40:20that the story is what matters.
1:40:23And the journalism should be far more
1:40:26important than the journalist.
1:40:28I mean on this guy thing I was saying to
1:40:30Francis earlier that I have a dream that
1:40:32I
1:40:33that I want to realize in the next few
1:40:35weeks
1:40:36where I want to write a story about Sky
1:40:38where I don't mention the fact that I
1:40:40was living inside the team for 13 weeks
1:40:42where I don't mention any conversations
1:40:44I've had where I just do a proper
1:40:47journalist job talk to people put all
1:40:50the pieces together tell the story and
1:40:52tell it without any comment and just let
1:40:55the reader decide how he wants to
1:40:56decide. That's the journalism I would
1:40:59most like to do. That's the journalism
1:41:01that is most satisfying and I think
1:41:03that's the journalism that is most
1:41:05valuable. So the point you're making I
1:41:08agree 100%.
1:41:10I think we're running out of time in
1:41:11fact we're going to get kicked out of
1:41:12here pretty soon. So I just want to ask
1:41:14one last question before we before we
1:41:16wind up and that is given all that
1:41:18you've experienced in sport and and
1:41:21writing about it
1:41:23can we still believe in sport? Do you
1:41:25still believe in the values that what we
1:41:26spoke about earlier on that that Jamie
1:41:28says drives you know his company and
1:41:30that
1:41:31in writing about Lance Armstrong and
1:41:33others that you're in a sense trying to
1:41:35uphold and protect?
1:41:36Yeah, I believe we can believe in sport.
1:41:40There's plenty that I believe in and of
1:41:42course there's plenty I'd be suspicious
1:41:44about. But I mean I watch
1:41:46Usain Bolt and I think well athletics
1:41:49has been so tarnished can I believe what
1:41:50I'm seeing?
1:41:51And I kind of
1:41:53give him the benefit of the doubt to a
1:41:54degree.
1:41:55I don't know athletics as well as I
1:41:57would know other sports but I watch the
1:41:58English Premier League football. I
1:42:01covered Man City's game on Saturday
1:42:02against Middlesbrough. Do I think I'm
1:42:05watching doped up footballers?
1:42:07I don't.
1:42:08Do I believe that they might be
1:42:10overdosing on painkillers to overcome
1:42:13injury? Yes, I do. That's legal. Yes, it
1:42:16is.
1:42:17Is it unethical? Well
1:42:19it might be a little bit unethical in
1:42:21that they may be overusing painkillers
1:42:23but I can live with that. I look at
1:42:25something like the Tour de France and I
1:42:27was thinking about this today because I
1:42:30covered it last year and our youngest
1:42:33child who's 19 year old came with me on
1:42:35the tour.
1:42:36And she had no interest in cycling but
1:42:40on the tour for 4 weeks she fell in love
1:42:42with it. So she gets to know all of the
1:42:44Chris Froome and Quintana and Contador
1:42:49and Richie Porte and all of the guys.
1:42:51And one day in the final week I'm
1:42:54walking down to the start where the
1:42:56riders sign on and Molly my 19 year old
1:42:59is with me.
1:43:00And
1:43:01Richie Porte whom I got to know when I
1:43:04was with Team Sky is coming opposite me
1:43:08in his red BMC jersey.
1:43:10And he goes past me and as he's gone
1:43:12past me he
1:43:14he remembers kind of who I am. And to
1:43:16give him great credit for being a kind
1:43:18of a sweet guy he turns his bike round
1:43:20and comes back and he said oh David I
1:43:22hadn't seen you how are you and we have
1:43:24a chat.
1:43:25And my 19 year old daughter looked on
1:43:27this and she thought it was the most
1:43:28amazing thing she's ever seen in her
1:43:30life. Richie's Richie Porte spoke to her
1:43:33dad right?
1:43:35Now
1:43:37thinking about that
1:43:38if I thought Richie Porte was a cheat
1:43:41I'd be really embarrassed about it. I'd
1:43:43be saying to her Molly
1:43:45there's nothing
1:43:46you know you shouldn't think that that's
1:43:48anything special.
1:43:49You know
1:43:50don't think that that's a good thing.
1:43:53But I don't believe Richie Porte is a
1:43:55cheat.
1:43:56And I'm kind of happy that he stopped
1:43:58and came back and we had a lovely chat
1:44:00and remembered some old times. Um so I
1:44:03think what you must never do is decide
1:44:07they're all at it because they're not
1:44:09all at it. Plenty of them are and you
1:44:11have to make up your mind but don't
1:44:14don't allow your skepticism to become
1:44:16cynicism. Because once it becomes
1:44:18cynicism you end up being unfair to a
1:44:20lot of people who are playing by the
1:44:22rules.
1:44:23David it's been great having you here
1:44:24after
1:44:25all the troubles you had at home and and
1:44:28the fact that you came out in this brief
1:44:30window of opportunity we're eternally
1:44:31grateful and we hope to get you back
1:44:33again soon. Thanks for being here
1:44:34tonight. Yeah, thank you.
1:44:35David Walsh everyone.
1:44:45David
1:44:47the Peter News from the Brunswick Street
1:44:49bookstore is up there up the back. He
1:44:51does have copies of David's book.
1:44:52David's happy to sign a few for you if
1:44:54you want to go up there and and purchase
1:44:56a copy of his book. Thank you for coming
1:44:57along. This is the final event in
1:44:59Melbourne for this year's Sports Writers
1:45:00Festival but we're already starting to
1:45:02plan for next year. So hopefully we'll
1:45:03see you there again soon. Thank you very
1:45:05much.
1:45:07Thanks mate. Thank you. Yeah, sorry. It
1:45:09probably went down too long at the time.
1:45:11Yeah. Fantastic. Yeah, went well. Yeah.
1:45:14Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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