People’s opinions of Lance Armstrong have changed dramatically over the last couple of years, but the man himself has barely changed at all.
When director Alex Gibney originally set out to make a documentary about Lance Armstrong, it was intended as an uplifting tale, a feel-good story; the return of the cyclist who beat cancer and defied the critics to win the Tour de France seven times and was going to do so yet again despite being out of the sport for four years. It was going to be called ‘The Road Back’.
To help make the documentary, Gibney was given unprecedented access to the Armstrong camp throughout his comeback tour in 2009. The director and his crew chilled with Lance in his hotel room before and after races, they were granted access to inner circle meetings with Astana team manager Johan Bruyneel and Armstrong’s agent Bill Stapleton amongst others and they were present in his home when he was visited by officials from WADA (World Anti-Doping Agency) and USADA (United States Anti-Doping Agency) on consecutive days, filming him give blood in front of his children for WADA and getting angry with having to go through the process all over again when USADA showed up the next day.
So far, so good in terms of the ‘puff piece’ – as it’s referred to by many of the numerous and well-informed commentators featured throughout the documentary – piece it together with the inspirational footage of Lance beating cancer and returning to cycling and his vehement denials of any wrongdoing whatsoever and Gibney had plenty of material for the project he initially intended to make in the first place.
Except, as we all know now, things changed dramatically when Armstrong’s world began to collapse in front of him towards the end of 2012, with years of damning evidence all coming together and eventually leading to the infamous Oprah interview at the beginning of last year, when Lance ‘fessed up but still didn’t seem to show much sign of remorse for what USADA called the “most sophisticated, professionalised and successful doping programme that sport has ever seen”.
The narrative changed dramatically for Gibney, but considering that his original documentary was intended to paint Armstrong in a positive light, he does a pretty good job of showing him up for the fraud that he was, and, quite frankly, still is, based on an interview he gave to Gibney for the movie, which took place five months after the Oprah interview last year.
In that interview, Armstrong maintains that, in the face of damning evidence, he was clean when he returned to cycling in 2009 and he does so with the same conviction that he denied all the previous allegations against him when he was still on the bike.
This time, however, the audience isn’t so gullible as to fall into his trap and if there was any danger that a bit of sympathy towards him might creep in, it is removed by the compelling accounts against him given by a series of commentators that were either in his inner circle at some stage of his career – Frankie and Betsy Andreu, George Hincapie, Jonathan Vaughters – or had a better idea than most of what was really going on – renowned cycling authors David Walsh, Bill Strickland and Daniel Coyle.
Director Alex Gibney at the New York premiere of The Armstrong Lie in October
Their accounts, together with repeated mention of the overwhelming evidence against Armstrong, help accurately portray Armstrong as a cold-blooded, absolutely ruthless character who was willing to do anything to get to the top and didn’t care about whose lives and whose reputations he ruined along the way.
“I like to win but more than anything I can’t stand the idea of losing because to me that equals death,” Armstrong says at one point (in 2009) and that pretty much sums up his approach.
Despite the contributions of the supporting cast – Betsy Andreu is particularly fascinating and keep an ear out for a ridiculously insulting voice message left on her answering machine by Stephanie McIlvain of Oakley – Armstrong is, of course, the most interesting protagonist in the entire documentary.
Although he lets us in on all the deception and the cheating that he got up to once again, as he did with Oprah, you still get the feeling that he doesn’t regret it all that much and would do it all over again if he could get away with it. While all of the other cyclists involved admit to doping they also realise that the fact that everyone else was doing it doesn’t cut it as an excuse; Armstrong uses the universal doping as a defence mechanism; it was all part of the game and he was the best at it.
“I certainly was very confident I would never be caught,” he admits and it appears, even now, as if his biggest regret was actually getting caught as opposed to, you know, all that other stuff he did.
The fact that so much had been said and written about Lance Armstrong in the last 18 months or so and the fact that Gibney originally set out to make a completely different documentary presented difficulties for the director and even while narrating, he constantly asks questions of his ability to present a complete and balanced account of events.
In the end, in this author’s opinion at least, he does a superb job in a fascinating piece that runs just over two hours and turns what had been a beautiful lie for Armstrong into the ugly truth behind it all throughout.
The Armstrong Lie is released in Irish cinemas on January 31
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