Lance Armstrong interview: Twitter, transparency and time trials (part 1)

February 10, 5:28 PMCycling ExaminerJames Raia

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Three years and six months after he stepped off the Tour de France winner's podium in Paris for the seventh straight year and retired, Lance Armstrong is again pedaling professionally.

Divorced father of three children (soon to be four), global businessman, cancer survivor and philanthropist, Armstrong, 37, will compete in his first North American comeback event beginning Feb. 14 in the much-anticipated fourth annual Amgen Tour of California.

The nine-day race will continue through a mountainous final stage Feb. 22 in Escondido, California.

Late last week, I had the opportunity to interview Armstrong at length via telephone from the team’s training camp in Santa Rosa.

The wide-ranging interview covered, among other areas, time trials, transparency and Twitter.

Here’s part 1 of a multiple-part series that will be posted in sections as the Amgen Tour of California approaches:

Question: For the last couple of months, you’ve had a Twitter account and you’re very active on it and it’s very popular (more than 70,000 followers). Are you an investor in the company, are you a hyper toe-tapper type or just what’s your interest?

Lance Armstrong: I don't have a financial stake in Twitter, no. I didn't even know about it three months ago. But sometimes I feel like I work for them. I get asked about it and it’s unbelievable what gets written in regards to me and Twitter (laughter). But, hell, I wish I had a little piece of the action. But I don't. But in the end, it's profitable or beneficial for me and it's beneficial for the foundation and for the team.

Look, in the last 10 years, primarily 1999 to 2005 I wasn't the most openly transparent person in the world. And it led people to say, 'Well, hmm. We don't know where he is. We don't know what he's doing. He won't talk to us. So, he must be up to no good.’ And even if they didn't write that you're up to no good, they would think that you're up to no good and it would lead to speculation and rumor.

Something like Twitter comes along or accessibility to video blogs, you say, F-it. I'm going to come back and you may not care, but I'm going to tell you what I had for breakfast and I'm going to take a picture of it. I'm going to tell you when I'm on a training ride. I'm going to tell you when I'm at my son's flag football game. I'm going to tell you when I just cracked a bottle of bad-ass red wine.

You can take my biggest detractor in the press room and if they read that, then after awhile they'll realize, man, this is really him telling us what he's doing. And then they realize, ‘You know what? This guy is not secluded in a dark room with a team of mysterious doctors up to no good. This guy is a regular f-ing guy.’ So, I've got no stake in Twitter, but Twitter has helped.

Q: Throughout your career, you’ve been a team leader. What do you think of Lance Armstrong as a domestique (team rider)?

L.A.: It's definitely a possibility. I think it's healthy for me to remind myself why I came back. And I came back because I wanted to take the Livestrong message around the world and I came back because I wanted to ride my bike again. It's very simple; it's not complicated.

It becomes complicated when somebody says, ‘Lance you won the Tour seven times. If you get fourth, you're going to ruin your legacy. You're going to ruin a perfect record.' That's their impression. That's the pressure we put on ourselves. We want athletes to be perfect and we want them to hit the game-winning shot, walk away and never come back. Sometimes, they (the athletes) get in the locker room and say ‘F-it. I want to come back. And that happened to me.

Q: From the pictures and video I’ve seen, you look thicker or stronger in your upper body. Has your body changed?

L.A.  When I started training last summer before I decided to come back, I was spending a lot of time in the gym. In the last couple of years, I’ve put on some upper-body mass and put on weight. That’s for sure. And I continued to train in the gym all the way until October. So it’s going to take a few months to get that off. It’s already come down considerably. But the pictures and the cameras can be deceiving, too. But really what the scale says and it’s what it says in April that’s a good comparison, not in February. Still. I’m much lighter at this time of the year than I normally would be.

Q: You’re going to be a father again, and your fourth child will be about one month old or so when the Tour de France comes along. Will you bring him or her along to the finish like your other children or do you have a different plan at this point?

L.A.: He or she will be at the Tour, for sure. Quite honestly, my schedule this year pretty much revolves around my kids’ schedule. (Former wife) Kristin (Armstrong) has been the real hero and very helpful to me and understanding on this comeback. It’s not optimal that I fly from here back home for five days before the Tour of California. That’s the schedule Kristin and I have set out and the kids want to see their old man. I will always travel back and forth to have quality time with my kids. That’s what we’ll do this week and so all that will stay the same as it was the first time.

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