Time for a confession – I enjoy listening to Armstrong
Disgraced cyclist may not deserve a platform for his opinions but his Tour podcast is still riveting, admits Tom Cary
There is more than a little hypocrisy in his criticism of Brailsford
Man, I have seen this movie,” drawls a familiar voice. “The ending is s---. [Dave] Brailsford needs to put the shovel down and stop digging.”
This has been an interesting Tour de France in lots of ways. The battle for the yellow jersey has been one of the closest in years. We have had crashes and controversy. French panache. Plenty of talking points. But there has been one unexpected addition to this year’s Tour, which has added to my experience anyway.
I am not sure whether I should be admitting to it but I have been enjoying Lance Armstrong’s Stages podcast on the long transfers each day.
Apparently, I am not alone. To judge from the emails Armstrong reads out from listeners around the globe, it seems people are as fascinated as ever by Big Tex.
Stages attracts around 300,000 downloads per day across all platforms and that number is growing. The podcast itself has obvious limitations. Recorded a few minutes after the end of each stage from an Airstream caravan in Aspen, Colorado, it offers little in the way of “live colour”; the sights, the sounds, the smells of a hard-working peloton on the road, to paraphrase the immortal Marty Dibergi from This Is Spinal Tap. For that, though, we have the Telegraph-backed The Cycling Podcast, and excellent it is, too.
What Stages does offer is unique insight into cycling’s biggest race from a man who lived it, breathed it and, let’s face it, abused it for years. It is irreverent. It is mischievous. He gets guests on. Former team-mate George Hincapie has been sitting in recently.
The elephant in the Airstream can get too much. There is clearly more than a little hypocrisy in cycling’s biggest cheat and bully of all time, a man who destroyed careers, criticising Team Sky principal Sir Dave Brailsford for cherrypicking which reporters he wants to speak with. The fact remains, though, that Stages is also packed with interesting anecdotes and analysis. The answer to the “what-would-you-havedone-in-that-situation?” question, which co-host JB Hager frequently puts to him, is nearly always fascinating because Armstrong bossed the Tour for years. He knows what the main players think, how he would react. And he genuinely seems to enjoy it.
It all adds up to a bit of a conundrum: should we be listening at all?
Armstrong would love us to. The Texan is clearly trying hard to rehabilitate himself into polite society. He already hosts one other podcast, The Forward (on which he gets very eclectic guests), while a cameo in HBO’S new ‘mockumentary’ Pharmacy Road is an obvious attempt from a man who two years ago dubbed himself the “Voldemort” of professional cycling to show he has learnt how to poke fun at himself.
He does not deny that he craves an audience. “I had two platforms before: cycling and cancer,” he told Cnn.com recently. “A man with no platform is a lost man.
“I’m sure there are plenty of emails that tell me to ‘go f--- yourself ’,” he added. “But I’m not overly concerned by the negativity.” Two things are certain. Armstrong will continue to polarise opinion. And Stages is a pretty good listen when driving four hours through the Alps.