Lance Armstrong - Is He Worse Than Anyone Else? David Walsh Interview Pt. 3

I'm not going to ask you to name a top 5 villains but 5 people that stick out in your head , immediately right now, who have done the most to damage our sport in the last 13 years since Lance first won his tour? Well one of the things that people will say about Lance is, come on, don't tell me he was any worse that Jan Ulrich or Ivan Basso or Contador even, who tested positive. You know basically all those top guys were doing something so therefore they're all equal in terms of villainy, but I don't agree with that. I think Lance was a particular case. I think he saw doping as an opportunity, he embraced that opportunity and he decided, if our doping program was better than everybody else's we would have such an advantage because doping is such a big influence on competition. So I think Lance seized the opportunity of doping to make himself the most successful cyclist in the history of the Tour de France, fraudulent of course, and that would would be taken away. But at the time that he left in 2005, as we said earlier, if he didn't come back, he's still the seven times Tour winner. So I think Lance would have to be the number one villain in my eyes and I don't want to categorise him as that but I don't think there was anyone more cynical I think what Lance did to Emma O'Reilly was despicable beyond belief and everything he's got in terms of the consequences of his doping being discovered he deserves. People say O I feel sorry for him, for this reason, I feel sorry for him for that reason. I say, if you feel sorry for him you weren't listening when he discussed Emma O'Reilly at the Discovery Press Conference in 2004, you weren't listening when he discussed Emma O'Reilly in November 2005 at the SEA case, under oath. So everything bad that has happened to him since, in my view, he deserves. I always had a particular disliking; I have to say for Johan Bruyneel. I just thought, if you could put cynicism into human form you've got Johan Bruyneel. . I think he had an attitude to doping that was wretched. I mean, again that all cycling thing of doping is our business,it's not your business, don't even dare ask, we do what ever we like and you have no right to know. Cycling was never going to recover as long as people like Johan Bruyneel. were involved so I look forward to him not being involved in the world of cycling. A guy who has come out of this relatively unscathed though has been Jim Ochowicz. I think Jim Ochowicz knew precisely what was going along. I think he was a plausible guy, I think people believed him and I think he's another guy who on the barometer of cynicism would be up there an 8 or a 9 out of 10.