342. Has Lance Armstrong Finally Come Clean?

He was once the most lionized athlete on the planet, with seven straight Tour de France wins and a victory over cancer too. Then the doping charges caught up with him. When he finally confessed to Oprah, he admits, “it didn’t go well at all.” That’s because he wasn’t actually contrite yet. Now, five years later, he says he is. Do you believe him?

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 1:28Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 2:16Speaker 01

  My name is Lance Armstrong and I'm... What do I do? That's a really good question.

• 2:22Stephen J. Dubner?

  Armstrong, of course, used to be the most lionized athlete in the world. He's from Plano, Texas. He came up relatively hard.

• 2:30Speaker 01

  I mean, I didn't grow up on the street, but I didn't grow up behind a white picket fence with, you know, 2.3 brothers and sisters and an SUV and a mom and a dad. My mom and I were scrappers.

• 2:40Stephen J. Dubner?

  He swam competitively, ran track and cross-country. He rode a bike, too.

• 2:45Speaker 01

  And then I did triathlons professionally from the age of 15 to 18.

• 2:49Stephen J. Dubner?

  He specialized in events that placed a high value on the ability to withstand suffering.

• 2:54Speaker 01

  You have to train very hard and you've just got to be tough as nails.

• 2:57Stephen J. Dubner?

  Armstrong wasn't good at school and he wasn't interested either, but it didn't seem to matter. He became a professional cyclist and when he was 27 years old, he won the Tour de France, the three-week, 2,200-mile race that makes the labors of Hercules look like a walk in the park.

• 3:13Speaker 01

  I mean, it is really a brutally, brutally hard sport.

• 3:16Stephen J. Dubner?

  The Tour de France is so famous that it's known even by people who know zero about cycling, which in America is pretty much everyone. That changed with Lance Armstrong, especially when he won again the following year. He put half the nation in spandex.

• 3:34Stephen J. Dubner?

  And then he won again, again, again, an unprecedented seven tour wins all in a row. He became a hero, then a legend, and then something even bigger because he won those seven tours after having survived cancer and starting a cancer foundation called Livestrong. You know those yellow Livestrong bracelets? He put even more people in them than he put in spandex. Armstrong was loud, cocky, and combative on and off the bike, but it worked. It seemed he literally couldn't lose at anything.

• 4:11Stephen J. Dubner?

  He had a rock star girlfriend. There was talk of him going into politics someday, maybe running for governor of Texas. But there was also talk of him cheating, of doping his way to victory. Cycling, along with most other sports, has a long history of cheating.

• 4:27Speaker 01

  You know, the original tour riders were jumping on trains and holding on to cars and taking cocaine.

• 4:33Stephen J. Dubner?

  Journalists and others came forward with seemingly credible evidence that Armstrong was using, among other things, erythropoietin, or EPO, a naturally occurring hormone thought to boost performance. Armstrong aggressively denied the charges.

• 4:48Speaker 01

  I have never doped.

• 4:52Speaker 01

  We're sick and tired of these allegations, and we're going to do everything we can to fight them.

• 4:57Stephen J. Dubner?

  In some denials, he seemed to wrap himself in the cape of a cancer survivor superhero, like this one from his 2005 Tour de France victory speech.

• 5:07Speaker 01

  The cynics and the skeptics, I'm sorry for you. I'm sorry you can't dream big, and I'm sorry you don't believe in miracles.

• 5:14Stephen J. Dubner?

  But in 2012, seven years after his last Tour de France victory, most of the allegations were finally proven true.

• 5:23Speaker 02

  Some breaking news now on Lance Armstrong. The global governing body of cycling has just announced moments ago it will ban Armstrong for life and strip him of his seven tour titles.

• 5:35Stephen J. Dubner?

  Ultimately, Armstrong confessed, but America wasn't buying it. It wasn't just that he doped, that's what cyclists did, nor was it that he lied. It was the way he lied, attacking his accusers, suing them. Even his confession seemed to lack an ounce of contrition. Armstrong had gotten very rich, but between lawsuits and lost sponsorships and other clawbacks, he had to pay back more than $100 million. He was sued by, among many others, the US government for having defrauded his team sponsor, the US Postal Service. Armstrong also got kicked out of his own cancer foundation. So where does all this leave a person?

• 6:17Speaker 01

  My name is Lance Armstrong, and I'm... What do I do? That's a really good question.

• 6:23Stephen J. Dubner?

  He's got five kids, three from his first marriage and two with his fiance. His offspring are also athletic.

• 6:30Speaker 01

  My son, I just took him off to Rice University where he's playing football.

• 6:34Stephen J. Dubner?

  Armstrong splits his time between Austin, Texas and Aspen, Colorado. He was in Aspen when we spoke with him.

• 6:40Speaker 01

  I just took my wife and my son over to the CP Burger and had a cheeseburger and some fries and a chocolate milkshake.

• 6:49Stephen J. Dubner?

  He also hosts a couple of podcasts, a seasonal Tour de France commentary called The Move, and his mainstay, an interview show called The Forward.

• 6:59Speaker 01

  Many of the guests that I've had on have had these moments in their lives where they've had to establish some sort of a bottom, a low point in their life and then decide for their own sake and their family's sake and everybody's sake that they're going to move forward.

• 7:16Stephen J. Dubner?

  Today on Freakonomics Radio, you'll hear a man trying to reinvent himself and grappling with his mistakes in real time.

• 7:23Speaker 01

  I was like, OK, you know what? I don't, [bleep] it, I don't know what's going on.

• 7:30Stephen J. Dubner?

  Has Lance Armstrong finally come clean? You be the judge.

• 7:46Speaker 03

  From Stitcher and Dubner Productions, this is Freakonomics Radio, the podcast that explores the hidden side of everything. Here's your host, Stephen Dubner.

• 8:01Stephen J. Dubner?

  Lance Armstrong spends a lot of time these days trying to reconcile how the world sees him and how he sees himself.

• 8:07Speaker 01

  Nobody wants to hear that a certain segment of any population is pissed at them or hates them or whatever. And for a long, long time, that really, really affected me and bothered me. And I just want to be honest with you and the listeners, I understand. How could you not be?

• 8:27Stephen J. Dubner?

  The 2018 Tour de France is finishing up this week. There are still constant doping allegations and occasionally penalties. Armstrong still feels he was unfairly scapegoated for all of cycling's sins.

• 8:41Speaker 01

  I mean, I raced in a generation and on a team that was amongst 20 other teams that all did the same thing. That every single one of them did the same thing. And, you know, we all, we were on this American team in the, oh, gosh, I went to the team in 92. And I've referred to this a lot over the years. I mean, and I refer to it as sort of low octane and high octane, right? Cortisone and, and things like that are low octane. And then when you get into EPO, the 10 percenters, those are high octane. And the sport of cycling in the mid 90s, EPO was like wildfire. And we were holding out, holding out, holding out, just assuming that, come on, there has to be a test for this.

• 9:25Speaker 01

  And we got to this, this moment where we looked around and we're like, oh my God, we, we don't have a choice. Or, well, we do have a choice. Our choice is to go home. We can just quit, you know, retire. But if we want to stay and fight, you know, we all walking around with knives because we, we were told we were going to a knife fight. And next thing you know, everybody had guns. And we said, oh, shit, these boys are carrying guns. And so in mid, in the spring of 95, we, we went to the gun store.

• 9:54Stephen J. Dubner?

  Are you surprised at how long you got away with it? And, and I'm curious what kind of cost or burden it must have been to keep it secret for so long, especially when you're getting accused of it?

• 10:09Speaker 01

  It's, it's made a lot easier when you have drugs that were undetectable. And, or really, not even drugs, plural. I mean,

• 10:21Speaker 01

  Really a drug, right? This was really sort of all about EPO, yeah. And so you had two things. One, a drug that was undetectable for a very, very long time. So it was the wild, wild west. And secondly, you had a drug in EPO that had a half-life of somewhere between four and five hours. So very easy to monitor that. And if you knew that you were going to be in that window of time you'd be tested, you could, if you could just do some basic math, you could figure that out. And then thirdly, and I did say this, and I got a bunch of criticism for it, which I should have. You know, my line used to always be, I've passed every drug test they've ever given me.

• 11:05Speaker 01

  And, you know, people sort of laughed at that after the fact. But the reality is that that's actually true. Because every time those tests were given, they were clean. Because if you manage the half-life and you manage the time of year, there's a window of risk. I cared about one event, and that's the Tour de France, and it's in July. So I knew that I had to open up that window of risk for six to eight weeks, and that was it. So come August, September, October, all the rest of the months, guys, you can come all day long, any day, any time of day, doesn't matter. Of course, that doesn't change anything, right? I mean, most people would say, well, just because you managed the half-life and did

• 11:49Speaker 01

  the math right, that doesn't mean that the test was clean. But I guess all to say that, you know, there was no other nefarious sort of masking or any, it was just about managing, managing the math.

• 12:06Stephen J. Dubner?

  But there was some masking, swapping out blood, for instance, to avoid detection. Here from the 2013 documentary, The Armstrong Lie, is the journalist Daniel Coyle.

• 12:17Speaker 04

  In 2000, they developed a test for EPO. So the smart guys, Ferrari being one of them, went back to an older technology, which was you take out bags of blood before the race. During the race, you put them back in.

• 12:33Stephen J. Dubner?

  Ferrari is Michele Ferrari, the Italian doctor and doping expert who worked closely with Armstrong and has also been banned from the sport.

• 12:42Speaker 01

  The transfusion became part of our world once they developed the test. It became a part of everybody's world. I mean, the transfusions is old school, right? That's retro. That's what they did in the 80s, 70s and 80s. And so people said, okay, well, we'll just go retro.

• 13:00Stephen J. Dubner?

  Well, I mean, if we're talking old school and doping, I mean, you can go back to the early days of the tour. You can go back to the early, the original Olympics. I mean, performance enhancement drugs have been around as long as, if not longer than sports, right?

• 13:16Speaker 01

  Well, that is, all of that is true. But I know none of us thought about the ancient Greeks. We were thinking about ourselves and thinking about just how [bleep] hard this sport is and how we're just getting throttled.

• 13:28Stephen J. Dubner?

  You know, you'd been riding for so many years, you had this unbelievable endurance, physical and mental. And then you started taking EPO and now you're riding often the same courses, the same hills, whatnot. You knew what it felt like before. What it feel like, physically, what it feel like in comparison when you had EPO in your bloodstream?

• 13:49Speaker 01

  Oh, I mean, it's very hard to compare. I can, I can try to imagine. I mean, I'm 46 years old and 15 pounds heavier than I was then. So naturally, it's, it's, it's a lot harder. You go a lot slower, you breathe harder, you sweat more. And, you know, that's just that.

• 14:08Stephen J. Dubner?

  I mean, did it feel like you had a little engine, you know, helping you out? Was it that drastic or not really?

• 14:15Speaker 01

  Essentially, I mean, it, look, you still, there's no, that I've ever heard of or seen or taken, there's no compound that prevents suffering, right? So even with, even with, even with these, with EPO or whatever, you still, all of the- The effects of if you're in a race and you're over the limit and you're suffering and you're the only thing we can point to is I had an unbelievable ability to buffer lactic acid. So when you're on a one hour climb in the Tour de France, you know, the thing that starts to make you go slower is lactic acid. If you just went running up a hill as fast as you could and sprinting, you would start to slow, slow, slow, slow,

• 14:58Speaker 01

  stop. The thing that stops you is lactic acid. So I had this ability to not only buffer it, but clear it. So, once we hit the downhill, then my lactate levels would drop significantly faster than anybody else. So that's really the only thing we could point to. And then it's like, I just, I trained my ass off. I loved it. I thrived on the work and the process. It was my favorite part of it, to be honest. And then when I got in the race, I just, I didn't want to lose.

• 15:30Stephen J. Dubner?

  But do you think you could have won any Tour de France without doping?

• 15:36Speaker 01

  Well, it depends what the other 199 were doing.

• 15:40Stephen J. Dubner?

  Well, considering what was actually happening at the time, considering the opponents you were actually racing against, right? Yeah. If you did nothing, could you have won?

• 15:51Speaker 01

  Zero percent chance.

• 16:00Stephen J. Dubner?

  The subject of doping occasionally comes up on Armstrong's Tour de France podcast, The Move.

• 16:08Speaker 01

  Hey, everybody. Welcome back to The Move podcast. Let's talk about today, the 200 best cyclists.

• 16:13Stephen J. Dubner?

  Here he is at the start of this year's tour, talking to his co-host JB Hager about the champion British cyclist Chris Froome. Froome had recently come under suspicion after a urine test showed a high level of an asthma medication. But a ruling by the World Anti-Doping Agency, or WADA, put Froome in the clear to ride in this year's race.

• 16:34Speaker 01

  And so they roll out the teams, they introduce the teams and they go in the, you know, reverse order. And all of the articles that I read were just about this, this unbelievably hostile reception that Chris Froome got at the team presentation, which not surprising. I mean, I said that's going to happen and that's going to, his, his, he's going to be like that for three weeks. So get used to it. But they were all really focused on that. And then I started watching the race, three guys in the break, Johan Alfredo, this, this young kid, Kevin Le Donwa, who's, who's father, Ivan Le Donwa, I raced with for a long time. Long story short, Johan Alfredo, here's a kid who's, I'm watching, everybody's clapping, everybody's happy, got our French guy out there and they loving it. And here's a kid

• 17:19Speaker 01

  who missed three tests in 2012, suspended for a year. And I'm just going, hang on a second. I, I get it that the tallest trees get all the wind. I know that. But how are we? Is there anybody else in the race that's been, that's had to sit out a year? Well, I don't, I don't know exactly, but

• 17:41Stephen J. Dubner?

  I'm sure there are.

• 17:42Speaker 01

  That's just, come on, people. Come on. No.

• 17:52Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah. So Lance, that, that was an amazing moment to me to hear you making that commentary and to hear at the end of it, your kind of frustration that after all you've done and been through, and after all the sport has been through, that it feels like it's more dysfunctional than ever. And I just really wanted to get your kind of take on the state of the sport, especially as, as, as doping is involved.

• 18:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and, and I don't know if doping is or is not involved. The situation with Chris Froome involved his asthma inhaler. I mean, this is a far cry from a gallon of EPO. This is very, very different. So nonetheless, it was twice the allowed limit, which got him in the hot water. And look, Chris Froome has, has won four tours. He's trying to win a fifth. The rider that I kept referring to there, Johan Alfredo, he hasn't won, you know, his neighborhood criterion. So it's obvious, we all know that the biggest, as I said in that clip, the tallest trees catch the wind. But it's still, you know, and I

• 18:58Speaker 01

  try not to, and I, and it may come off like I am, but I try not to To relate these things to me, but you know, half of, you know, not half, but a huge chunk of my competitors are driving team cars and working for sponsors and working for the organizer of the Tour de France. So it's, but none of them won seven tours. And so it's, it's a very similar situation. And so that I do get frustrated with that, but it, let's just get straight to the point here of what is wrong with the system. And if the aim in 2012 was to finally fix the system, they didn't. They absolutely didn't. And, and, and we still see it today. And it's a disservice to not just Chris Froome or the fans. It's

• 19:42Speaker 01

  a disservice to all of the stakeholders, the riders, the teams, the sponsors, the media, the fans, everybody involved. And our, our, listen, we could, you and me could talk, we don't have enough time to talk about how dysfunctional cycling is and the structure of the sport.

• 19:56Stephen J. Dubner?

  All right. Well, just get to the, just get to the good part at the end. Let's pretend for a minute that you were made czar of global cycling for a year. What would you do?

• 20:06Speaker 01

  Hmm. Okay. Um, the first thing that I would do, this is, that's a loaded question. I need, I would, and in fact, it's a fun side project to take on, but, but just off the top of my head, the first thing that I would do is I would leave the Olympic movement. I would get out of, from under the control of the International Olympic Committee, be your own sport, structure your own sport, manage your own sport, you know, have your own anti-doping regulations, but don't be beholden to people like the IOC and Tuata and to these organizations that are not interested in, in the, the success or the health of

• 20:49Speaker 01

  the sport of cycling. They're interested, they're politicians. And so, uh, get away, get as far away from that as you possibly can, as quick as you can. And then, from that point on, then you have to decide, right, how do we structure this thing? What, who are, who has equity here, right? And, you know, the first, I guess the second thing I would then do is I would go to, you know, back up just half a step. The only entity that makes money in this sport is ASO, and that's the parent company that owns the Tour de France. If you look at the NFL, you look at MLB, you look at the NBA, guess what? All of those players, all of those teams, even if you look at the premiership in England, the, the, the teams and the team owners, they get one very important

• 21:34Speaker 01

  thing, and that is a share in TV revenue. I'll give you a guess at how much revenue the riders and the teams in cycling get from the Tour de France.

• 21:45Stephen J. Dubner?

  You know, I wanted to, I wanted to get into this.

• 21:48Speaker 01

  It's, it starts with a zero and it ends with a zero.

• 21:51Stephen J. Dubner?

  Wow, you're kidding me.

• 21:53Speaker 01

  I'm not.

• 21:54Stephen J. Dubner?

  So, is that because, I mean, there are other individual sports, it doesn't, you don't have to be unionized, like the NFLPA and so on, you don't have to be unionized to get a cut. Although, interestingly, I don't know, do you know, do you follow UFC much?

• 22:07Speaker 01

  A little, a little, not, not, and, I know, I know there was a fight the other night, for example, but I don't know.

• 22:13Stephen J. Dubner?

  So, the athletes in UFC apparently get around eight to 10% of total revenues, whereas in the NFL, it's about 50%, it's been as high as 60%. So, I mean, you could argue that you need the union to make it happen. What's, what is the story in cycling? Why have the athletes never been able to get enough leverage to get any cash off the top?

• 22:32Speaker 01

  You really have to have that union. And, and, and the union has to be, has to be united, has to be strong, and has to be well-led. And, when I say united, I mean, nobody can cross that line. If, if we go to ASO, the owner of the tour, and say, okay, you know, and by the way, we don't have to go in and say, we want 50% today. Let's, you know what, let's start at, at, I don't care where we start, let's start at 10%, let's be, let's be strategic here. I'm not trying to lay out a playbook here, because none of this is gonna happen.

• 23:02Stephen J. Dubner?

  No, I like it.

• 23:03Speaker 01

  You and me are not, yeah. So, let's start, let's be reasonable, right? Let's come in with the Trojan horse, let's get what we can, and then, every two years, or every whatever, we're gonna come in and redeal you. And, and if you don't, well, guess what? We're not coming. They can put... You know, other people in the race, scabs, but it's not going to be the same race. And listen, there is a union, just so you know, there's a union in place, it's called the CPA, but it is completely ineffective. They have no power, no stroke, no influence. And, and the people like ESO and the Tour, as great as that event is, boy, they sit

• 23:45Speaker 01

  there every day and go, thank God, thank God, these guys are not organized. And then just one final thing, because this one really speaks to the investing in the game. So the way that cycling works today is almost akin to NASCAR, right? So you have team owners, you have different teams, they go find sponsors, they go find Lowe's, they go find Home Depot, they go find Target, you know, that's exactly the way it works in cycling. That's very different than Jerry Jones and the Dallas Cowboys, the Steinbrenners and the Yankees, John Elway and the, you know, whoever, you know, et cetera, et cetera. There, they actually own the team. And when they're done, or when they want to be done, they can sell the team. We see it happen quite frequently now.

• 24:28Speaker 01

  In cycling, once that sponsor, once the last day of that contract is up, and you do not find a new sponsor, but you just go home. The only equity you're left with, and this is, this is so sad, I mean, you could have had a team with a budget of $25 million a year for four years, so you just had $100 million come through the sport. At the end of it all, here's what you own. Because you don't have a stadium, you don't have a franchise, all you have are all the old bikes, the team bus, maybe some team cars, a whole lot of apparel, and that is it. You do not own a thing.

• 25:10Stephen J. Dubner?

  And for the athletes, then, you're totally susceptible or vulnerable, right? You're not controlling, you're barely controlling your own fate and you're certainly not controlling the fate of your employer, which I would think would create an incentive to do whatever you can for yourself at that moment.

• 25:29Speaker 01

  It is every, I just, it's like you've been tapping my phones for the last five years. I mean, this, this is, you're, you are exactly right. Cause when, when an athlete, especially a young athlete from, you know, maybe from a, you know, a rough background, uneducated, you put that kid in that place. I was that kid. That would, that would, I know exactly what that kid is thinking. And, and they look around and they're like, okay, what's my option set here? I can tell you what they're gonna do. And it, it really, it's where the two, right? And we're talking about the business of cycling. And then you can also talk about the anti-doping movement. It is where the two meet. And also, by the

• 26:10Speaker 01

  way, if the union is strong and unified and well organized and well led, and there is incentive because we're making money off the TV revenue or the TV rights worldwide, if we're all, if we're all participating in the upside of the sport, you would think, and I, and I truly believe that the athletes then start to self-police. Because, look, they look across, you know, there's 200 guys in the group. They look over there like, hey, man, if, if you're doing what I think you're doing, you know, just keep in mind that we're all participating in the upside here and, and that is potentially damaging

• 26:49Speaker 01

  to, to our revenue. And so it, it just all, you know, it's so frustrating because it just will never, it'll never happen.

• 26:58Stephen J. Dubner?

  So I was curious, you look at the post-career resurgence and public embrace of Alex Rodriguez, who's, you know, he's, here's a guy who doped at the highest levels and also performed at the highest levels. Do you look at someone like him and wonder why he gets more of a pass than you seem to be? And, and what are the differences?

• 27:19Speaker 01

  Um, okay, so the answer is absolutely. But I, but I just want to be really clear that, that when I ask the question to myself and really, really want an answer, it's not because I'm jealous or envious. I've met Alex many times. He's been perfectly nice to me and my kids. I wish him the best. The reason I ask is I just, I just want to know why. Like, what, what, what is the difference? And, and I actually, this is so funny. It's crazy. Like, you've been tapping my phone. It was like six months ago. I woke up one day and I was in Austin alone and I woke up and it was on my mind and I went crazy. I like, I was, I was literally running around the house.

• 28:02Speaker 01

  And I said, okay, I'm gonna ask five of the smartest people I know what they think the difference is between Alex Rodriguez and myself. And the answers were pretty consistent. The one key thing is that Alex Rodriguez was allowed to come back and play. And Alex Rodriguez was part of a team sport. And thirdly, Alex Rodriguez never stood for anything else other than baseball. So I was never allowed to come back to, to my sport at any level. And most people viewed it as an individual sport and I stood for much more than just cycling.

• 28:45Speaker 01

  And, uh, and so it's, it's, it's, you know, it's, you don't want to hear this crazy little side note of that day. I was running, I'm not, I'm not shitting you. I was running around the house and I was, it was, it was a Sunday and I was watching the, I was watching the NFL on Fox because I love, I love watching football. And, um, and the lady says, and we'd like to, we'd like to introduce our newest cast member on the desk here on NFL Sunday on Fox, Michael Vick. And man, and then I just lost it. I was like, okay, you know what? I don't, [__] it. I don't know what's going on.

• 29:25Stephen J. Dubner?

  Well, let me offer a fourth possible explanation. As everyone has said throughout history, the cover up is way worse than crime usually, right? So the situation as I see it is that A, you were the tallest tree in the land, you win sevens, that's gonna, that's gonna be number one. But number two, even though your argument and the argument of a lot of people is everyone was doing it, when you were confronted with it and charged with it all along, you, you didn't kind of duck it, but you denied it with a vigor and a venom and sometime really viciously against individual people that when it came out that it was true, I think

• 30:09Stephen J. Dubner?

  that's, to me, that's what people don't want to forgive. And if that's, if that's what it is, the difference between you and an A-Rod, I'm curious whether you think that's, you know, maybe is a worse, a worse infraction.

• 30:24Speaker 01

  I mean, if you, if you believe what you read, and I believe me, I'm the last one to believe everything I read, but if you believe what you read, and let's just use it for discussion, the purposes of this discussion, you know, there was not just one offense, there was two, which, which is worse. There were, there was an extremely litigious nature to his action and reaction. And so, not to debate it with you, but there is no difference. And, and

• 30:55Stephen J. Dubner?

  So it must just be that he's better looking than you or something. It's gotta be cosmetic.

• 31:00Speaker 01

  Listen, that is not very hard to do. I mean, this is, this is, I was at the back of the line when they were handing out the looks, but, um, you look, and, and the only thing I'll say just to my fans or maybe fans or no fans, is I know I did that. I know I treated people the wrong way. I know I sued people, but I, but I'll tell you what I have done. This, this thing's cost me $111 million. Everybody's been paid back. The people that were, that were treated poorly, I have traveled the world to sit with, to talk to, to apologize to, to make amends and to try to move forward.

• 31:41Stephen J. Dubner?

  Coming up after the break, this moving forward thing doesn't always go as planned.

• 31:46Speaker 01

  He goes, "F*** you. F*** you. F***." And he wouldn't stop, but I'm sitting there and I'm saying to myself, "You're Lance Armstrong. You have to do something. You can't take that."

• 32:04Stephen J. Dubner?

  So what does Armstrong do? We'll find out right after this.

• 32:14Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 32:59Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 33:17Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 34:00Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 34:22Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 35:13Stephen J. Dubner?

  Even today, Lance Armstrong is not one to shy away from a fight. Whether it's talking about his career, his fall from grace, or his current self-reclamation project, he's willing to be accountable to some degree. But you get the sense he's also constantly eyeing the horizon to see who's coming after him. He was, remember, a scrapper as a kid, raised by a single mom. He didn't have much pedigree or advantage. He went pro as a teenager, and then, as a lead rider on a cycling team, he was surrounded by other riders whose job essentially was to shield him from the wind, from opposing riders, from unwanted scrutiny.

• 35:56Stephen J. Dubner?

  But now Armstrong is pretty much without a shield, and it's been a big adjustment. Like a lot of world-class athletes, he got walled off early in life from the real world. When you finally get dropped back into reality, the rules of engagement aren't so clear. This was evident back in early 2013 when Armstrong sat for a long interview with Oprah Winfrey. It was time to finally admit what he'd been denying for years. He called his cycling career "one big lie."

• 36:29Speaker 05

  So, let's start with the questions that people around the world have been waiting for you to answer. And for now, I'd just like a yes or a no.

• 36:39Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 36:40Speaker 05

  Okay? This whole conversation, we have a lot of time, will be about the details. Yes or no? Did you ever take banned substances to enhance your cycling performance?

• 36:49Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 36:50Speaker 05

  Yes or no? Was one of those banned substances EPO?

• 36:56Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 36:57Speaker 05

  Did you ever blood dope or use blood transfusions to enhance your cycling?

• 37:02Stephen J. Dubner?

  You went on The Oprah Show to confess finally after a lot of round and round and round. I'm curious, you know, a lot of people criticize what seemed to be a lack of contrition. And I'm curious to know if you came to regret that. And I'm also curious to know why and how you chose that forum, The Oprah Show, to do that.

• 37:24Speaker 01

  I'll work backwards. So, she had been a friend of mine for a long time. She is obviously who she is. I trusted her to do a tough, yet a fair interview. And there were a few other options. Tom Brokaw's a good friend of mine. I had discussions with him. And, look, no matter who I talked to, be it you, be it Jesus Christ, be it whoever, it was not going to be good. It was only going to be bad. But I had to do it. And I had to do it for this very reason, is I knew that I was going to get sued six

• 38:08Speaker 01

  ways to Sunday. And we all know what happens when you get sued. You get the papers, next thing you know, they notice up your deposition, next thing you know, you're sitting in that chair with your hand in the air, and you're supposed to tell the truth, and you're on video, you're on audio. And those questions would have been...

• 38:28Speaker 01

  The hardest hitting, most mean spirited, unfair questions. And the next step after that was gonna be the leak to the media. And so I, I, I was faced with the situation where do I do this on my terms? Or do I do it on some opposing attorney's terms across the table? And so I chose to do it my way with her. And look, it, it, it, uh, it didn't go well. It didn't go well at all. And, and, uh, but it, but it couldn't have gone well, right? I mean, this is just, um, my buddy said it the best. He's, he's a really bright guy. He said, Lance, for cycling fans, it wasn't enough. And for the casual fan, it was too much.

• 39:13Speaker 01

  So, and I don't know if that makes any sense. I can break it down for you.

• 39:16Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah, it does. Yeah, yeah.

• 39:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so that leaves you with a room where nobody's happy.

• 39:22Stephen J. Dubner?

  Right, including yourself, it sounds like.

• 39:25Speaker 01

  You know, oddly enough, Oprah and I, shit, we were high five. And after that, we thought it went, she thought I did, she thought I did a great job. And, uh, I thought I, I thought I was completely honest and sincere. I was, I mean, I tried as, at least as hard as I could to be. But it just didn't, you know, there were some technical things. They broke it up into two shows. The first show, which, which had the admission and talked about all of the drugs was, was the bulk of that show. The second show, I talked about my family and I cried, you know, when I talked about my son, I cried and, you know. But once people saw show one, they're like, well, shit, I don't need to see show two.

• 40:00Stephen J. Dubner?

  Uh, I, I wonder if it's also just like, you know, contrition. Like maybe you weren't there yet. You were caught, you, you had to do this.

• 40:09Speaker 01

  Time out. May, maybe I wasn't there yet? No, there's no maybe.

• 40:14Stephen J. Dubner?

  All right.

• 40:15Speaker 01

  I definitely was not there yet. But again, I made the decision to do it because I didn't want to do it on the terms of, of, of a mean spirited, uh, opposing lawyer that was gonna leak it to the media. So I chose that setting and time and venue. And no, I wasn't there. I wasn't there at all. It took me a good three or four years to get to this place. You know what it took me? It took me enough.

• 40:43Speaker 01

  Instances of having somebody come up to me that just, they were a fan, they had my back, they defended me, and they were absolutely devastated by the revelation. And, you know, their sense of betrayal was so high, but, and this is one that came to me a year and a half ago, is I had a longtime employee of Livestrong finally reach out to me after, oddly enough, she rode the whole way over this thing and then absolutely hated my guts. Somebody oddly enough came to her and said, "You had to listen to his podcast. I don't

• 41:27Speaker 01

  know, this guy sounds a little different." And so she listened to a couple and she started to come around and then she reached out and she said, "Can we go have coffee?" And I said, "Absolutely." And so she's walking me through, I asked her about the process of what was happening at Livestrong whilst all the accusations were there and there was a lot of smoke, and then eventually there was fire. And, you know, she walked me through the whole thing and she said, "You know, at the end of the day, we all felt really complicit."

• 41:56Stephen J. Dubner?

  Oh, wow.

• 41:58Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 41:58Stephen J. Dubner?

  That must have made you feel really good, huh? Now you drag everybody in.

• 42:03Speaker 01

  Well, it changed my life.

• 42:05Stephen J. Dubner?

  Mm-hmm. How so?

• 42:08Speaker 01

  Look, betrayal is a terrible word. It's a word that, you know, nobody wants a child to their parent, a friend to another friend, a spouse to a spouse, a CEO to his company, whatever. It's a very heavy word. Complicit is 100x. And, you know, for me, that was really, I had already started to get my mind and my heart around the fact that people had suffered this tremendous amount of betrayal. And then I was hit with complicit and it just, it rocked me to the core. But it was, I tell you, it was the

• 42:53Speaker 01

  greatest, it was the greatest, her name is Melissa, it was the greatest gift that anybody has given me the last six years.

• 43:02Stephen J. Dubner?

  You sound like you've forgiven yourself or on the way to forgiving yourself. Is that the case?

• 43:12Speaker 01

  I don't, you know, I haven't, I don't think about that much, but I guess I have.

• 43:18Speaker 01

  I still, you know.

• 43:19Stephen J. Dubner?

  I mean, you can't undo it.

• 43:21Speaker 01

  No, no, of course not. No, no, no, no. No, but I can learn from it and I think I have.

• 43:27Speaker 01

  I'm not, you know, certainly not perfect. And by the way, I, I wouldn't change a damn thing. I wouldn't change a fucking thing about any of this. Like two, four years ago.

• 43:38Stephen J. Dubner?

  Because why?

• 43:39Speaker 01

  Well, let me just first say, I mean, if you'd asked me, I mean, I spent three and a half, four years just talking about how screwed I got. And, and post coffee with Melissa and realizing that so many, many people felt complicit because of me and because they trusted me. But when I look around my life, I, I know who's on the team right now. I know why they're on this team and I can, and I can believe in them and trust them in many ways. And so, uh, I spent many, many years, like any athlete does, whether it's five years or 15 years, where you're at the top of the game and you're on, you're at the best parties and you're on private jets

• 44:24Speaker 01

  and you're making a bunch of money and there's champagne and there's girls and there's everything. You know, everybody likes that party. But not many people have liked the parties of my life the last six years.

• 44:38Stephen J. Dubner?

  You recently settled this Department of Justice civil lawsuit, paying out $5 million to the US government. There was the possibility you'd have to pay out much, much, much more, which would have maybe, I don't know, financially ruined you. Betsy Andreu, the wife of former teammate Frankie Andreu, she says the $5 million settlement means you essentially got away with it. I'm curious if it feels like that to you.

• 45:03Speaker 01

  I actually don't think it has anything to do with who got away with anything. I think it has everything to do with two opposing sides coming to the start of the game and having to look at their whole card. The reality is that the postal service was not damaged. And I say that with 100% confidence because the Department of Justice and their lawyers freely admitted, every time that they were asked in any hearing, any proceeding, they freely admitted, "Your Honor, we cannot prove any damages."

• 45:44Speaker 01

  So, the way the law and the structure of key tam cases work is you have to actually prove damage to get any sort of penalty. And so, we were a month from trial and I think that the other side looked at their hand and said, "We gotta get out." And so, it's not about getting away with anything. Look, it wasn't five, it was six and a half million dollars. That is a lot of money. Yeah, how were you fixed for money generally? Are you fine? I mean, life had to be adjusted and the burn rate had to be taken down. But, yeah, yeah. You know, I mean, kids are expensive, raising five kids are expensive. We like to do nice things.

• 46:27Speaker 01

  I got very, very lucky on a few unbelievable investments many, many years ago through smart, smart people. Uber was one of those, I understand? Is that true? Yeah, Uber was one, DocuSign was another. And by the way, I mean, I had nothing to do with those decisions other than the decision to give, to trust somebody else with your money to invest it, which they did amazingly well. And a large chunk of that was put into a small company valued at $3.7 million called Uber. I had no idea. Now it's 60 billion, somewhere like that? It's silly. I don't even, yeah, 60, 70.

• 47:12Speaker 01

  It's a lot. And so, you know, that's just, I mean, that's just lucky.

• 47:17Stephen J. Dubner?

  So on your podcast, The Forward, you're interviewing Brian Fogel, who directed this amazing film Icarus, which is about doping in sports. And you're talking to him about how he gained the trust and even the friendship of the head of the Russian anti-doping effort, this guy Grigory Radchenkov, I believe. And you said to Fogel, you know, why on earth did he trust you? And then you said to him, Fogel, just kind of as an aside, you know, I don't really trust anybody in my life these days. And I was really curious whether you meant that, and if you did, what it means.

• 47:52Speaker 01

  It's a good question.

• 47:55Speaker 01

  You know, of course, there are people I trust.

• 48:00Speaker 01

  But those are people that have been in my life for a long time, and they made a choice five years ago. Do we stay or do we leave? And, you know, they're the ones that are very, very close, your best friends, your wife, your fiance, your, you know. But I definitely am very, very careful. I'm just careful with people. Just, you know, at this point, my lens and filter is just different than it was. And I don't think that's bad. I think that's, I think that's a positive for me.

• 48:39Stephen J. Dubner?

  I asked Armstrong why he wanted to make a podcast like The Forward about people living out their second chances.

• 48:46Speaker 01

  Many, many of these people, whether you're Michael Morton, who spent 26 years in prison for a crime he didn't do, whether you're Mia Khalifa, who made, you know, a regrettable decision, in her words, and did porn for three months and has branded a porn actress for the rest of her life. Or, you know, there's just a lot of these stories where people have just moved on and moved forward. And my life was, or actually is, still going through that. And so for me, there were a lot of interesting people. I really tried to take only people that I really cared to listen to. I don't like to read a bunch about... You know, I never did homework in school, so for me to sit down and do homework on these peoples, yeah, I was a terrible student. But this is actually the most homework I've

• 49:31Speaker 01

  ever done my entire life. And it's been really fun to dig in and learn about other people's lives and then sit across from them and talk for an hour. And then, you know, I had this thing, just in my own sports life, where I was, 2012 happened, my world came crashing down, largely due to my, my own actions and bad decisions. And the sport, the industry, the media, the fan, everybody turned. And so, you know, I, I basically said, okay, well, y'all too. And I didn't even ride, I put the bike up, I didn't ride, I own a bike shop

• 50:13Speaker 01

  in Austin, I never went to my own shop. And I started running, started swimming, started doing a lot of other sports, except cycling. And fast forward to a year ago, I got injured from running, had to find some sport that I could do just to stay sane and stay fit, and went back to the bike, and found myself, without sounding hokey, found myself falling back in love with cycling, just as a, just as a sport, just as a, an exercise.

• 50:49Stephen J. Dubner?

  Well, I've taken the time you promised, and I really enjoyed the conversation. I learned a lot. I didn't, I didn't, I'll be honest with you, I didn't really know what to expect. I mean, listening to your podcast, I get a pretty good sense of where you are as a human right now. And, you know, I know a lot of people are probably still very pissed at you and still feel very betrayed, but, but I think probably a lot of people will, will hear in your words and in your voice that you, you, you realize what you did to yourself and other people, and that you're on to the next chapter.

• 51:20Speaker 01

  And can I just say one thing on that, just because it's, at this point, there's no sense in me fighting that. You know, I had this, that's never, I've never had a really, really aggressive reaction to me until last summer. I was in Denver doing, we had the, the move down in Denver for, uh, for the, uh, Colorado Classic and I walked out of my Airbnb and there were all these little cool brew pubs. And you know, we, I always know when somebody's like, ah, here's Lance, you know, you just kinda get that sense. And so I see across the way, these people notice me, I cut across, I call an Uber cause I gotta get to the race and my Uber's on the other side of the street in front of the bar. And it's a patio scene and I walk out, I'm getting in my Uber and this one guy goes,

• 52:04Speaker 01

  "Hey Lance." And I fully expected him to go, "What's up dude?" And you know, "Right on, man, love you." And I go, "Hey, what's up?" He goes, "Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck." And he wouldn't stop and the next thing you know, the entire patio is screaming, "Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck." And Steve, I've never, I was like, I've never had that happen. I was like, "Oh." I was shaking. So I got in the car and it was a very short drive to the race, but I'm sitting there and I'm not saying a word, but I'm saying to myself, "You're Lance Armstrong. You have to do something.

• 52:48Speaker 01

  You, you not, you can't take that." So I called the bar. I said, "Put the manager on the phone." Manager gets on the phone, I explained to him everything that happened and he said, "Oh, man, I'm so sorry, dude. That's, you know, that's really regrettable. Hope it doesn't happen again." And I said, "Okay. I need you to do me a favor." I said, "Here's my credit card number." I said, "I want you to walk out there and you buy everything they're eating and drinking and tell them, tell them that I understand." So that was, you know, me of 10 years ago, I would've, I would've jumped across the railing and start throwing punches.

• 53:30Speaker 01

  But me, and this is 2017, in the summer, sitting in the car saying, "I have to act. I gotta do something." And that, that's the best thing that I could come up with and just to say to those people, "Look, I get it." And so it's the only time it's happened. It might happen tomorrow, it might happen 100 times in the next, I don't know, but I'll, that's, that's the way I live it now. So.

• 53:54Stephen J. Dubner?

  I think, um, I think you've come a long way, Lance Armstrong. It's pretty impressive. I'll be honest with you.

• 54:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, thank you. Thanks for having me on.

• 54:07Stephen J. Dubner?

  Coming up next time on Freakonomics Radio, an astronaut, a Catalan, and two linguists walk into a bar. It's our live, nonfiction game show. Tell me something I don't know.

• 54:22Speaker 06

  I got to fly twice on the space shuttle. And both my missions, I went to the Hubble Space Telescope and repaired it. And I was also the first person to tweet from space. There you go.

• 54:36Stephen J. Dubner?

  I love that's what gets the applause. You fixed the telescope. That's next time on Freakonomics Radio.

• 54:47Stephen J. Dubner?

  Freakonomics Radio is produced by Stitcher and Dubner Productions. This episode was produced by Derek John. Our staff also includes Alison Kreglo, Greg Rosalsky, Greg Rippon, Harry Huggins, Alvin Melathe, and Andy Meisenheimer. The music you hear throughout the episode was composed by Luis Guerra. Freakonomics Radio can be found on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Our entire archive is available on the Stitcher app or at Freakonomics.com, where we also publish transcripts and show notes. You can get the archive ad-free at Stitcher Premium, where you'll also find lots of bonus episodes. Just go to StitcherPremium.com/Freakonomics and use the promo code Freakonomics for one month free.

• 55:27Stephen J. Dubner?

  We can also be found on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or via email at [email protected]. Thanks for listening.

• 55:47Stephen J. Dubner?

  Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by Ozempic. Innovation happens through rethinking what's possible. And when it comes to GLP-1s, Ozempic pill does just that. Learn more about Ozempic semaglutide tablets, 4 and 9mg, by calling 1-833-OZEMPIC or visit Ozempic.com to view the medication guide and ask your doctor what's possible with FDA-approved Ozempic pill.

• 56:18Stephen J. Dubner?

  Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by Southern Company. The world and its energy needs are always changing. Southern Company's commitment to meeting this demand stays the same. That's because Southern Company believes energy is more than a utility. It's what powers possibilities. So they are looking ahead and investing $80 billion in infrastructure upgrades and are committed to fueling growth in ways that benefit all customers so that reliable and affordable energy is accessible for generations to come. Go to southerncompany.com to learn more. Southern Company, building the future of energy.

• 56:56Speaker 07

  Hey, it's Kelly Ripa. And if you don't know, I have a podcast where I get to say whatever I want. Hold on, let me get a shovel and a body bag. I envision doing a podcast with the conversations that happen in my dressing room, off camera, where people feel free to talk. No hair, no makeup. This is my kind of job. Only Kelly Ripa can ask me these questions. I'm flipping the script and saying what's really on my mind.

• 57:19Speaker 08

  We're seeing a different side of you. It's a little bit more honest.

• 57:23Speaker 07

  When the cameras go off, the real fun begins. Get my hair done over here. Hey. This is an off-camera podcast, so it doesn't even matter. It's unfiltered conversations and unexpected confessions.

• 57:35Stephen J. Dubner?

  My mom says, Woody, I knew your dad.

• 57:38Speaker 07

  Stop the press. I would like to volunteer to administer any and all DNA tests. Maybe that should be part of the show. Let's talk off-camera with me, Kelly Ripa. You just put that in the universe. Listen and follow wherever you get your podcasts.

• 57:56Speaker 08

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