Let’s talk things over, Lance

You know what, forget it ever happened. All you did was betray a million people, con another million, and make millions of dollars based on lies and deceit. There should be people who have done worse, right? Joseph Kony uses child soldiers for suicide missions; the Taliban has this wet dream about bombing the world into a new order; Hitler did funny things to Jews. Compared to them, you are just an apple of that tree in Eden.

However, congratulations on joining the club! “The Biggest Traitors in the History of Mankind”, wow… this does sound way cooler than a bunch of bicycle races. Your parents must be so proud. Let’s do a headcount here. There’s Judas, the club deity, and there surely is a marble bust of Marcus Brutus in some corner. There’s Mir Jafar, the guy who might have single-handedly cost India 200 years of oppression, there’s that hunchbacked dude who screwed the 300 Spartans clad in leather underwear; you get the drift.

I’m sure you got put in the Sports section. Ah, plenty of wonderful folks down in those sewers too – Ben Johnson, Tim Donaghy and Panama Lewis alone must account for more than a few hours’ of quality booze tales.

Sure, you’re still a newbie here. And apparently you’ve still got legions thousands of admirers clutching at straws (somehow in your case reminds me of that bald Asian kid’s dialogue from The Matrix: “There is no straw”). Sure, sponsors have ditched you; most are counting losses and getting plenty of “I told you so” catcalls from everyone they meet. But hey, you’ve still got your mining operations on, digging on deeper into people’s hearts and pockets using your cancer foundation, haven’t you? That should hold out.

Speaking of depths, the whole Confessions with Oprah on Oprah deal…classic! Apparently, that generated more tears in a day than all of the thousand Indian soaps combined. Now that is something people can’t hope to emulate, but hey, you’re Lance friggin’ Armstrong, aren’t you?

That was a pretty good interview, and Oprah being an old fan/TRP-forager sure helped your case, didn’t it? The way you put it, you were not the only one to blame, as since the dawn of mankind, more dope than blood has been flowing in the arteries of cyclists. The other guys have been bad boys too. You know, that’s the kind of defense I used to put up as a kid when caught stealing mangoes from old Sharma auntie’s courtyard. And even she wouldn’t buy it.

So, Oprah the Gentle threw another tranquillized pillow at you ever so softly: ‘What about the people who you let down?’

I almost expected you to scream “YOLO”, strip naked and jump up and down that couch. Instead, you did something that was even more hilarious.

You cried. Wept like a colicky baby. Said you’d decided to come clean after listening in on to your son defending his father to friends. Said you are going to spend the rest of your life apologizing to people, earning back their trust.

‘You can’t see it, but I’m so so sorry.’

At this point you had me thinking, this guy’s been reading too much Nicholas Sparks. I mean, no one has used that line since the Dark Ages, Lance. And good luck with that trust recovery part. Start with the son.

In the bedtime story they are going to tell kids 50 years from now, Travis Tygart suddenly switched roles with you to become the knight in the shining armor. You just went from Cinderella to Darth Vader in all of ten seconds! Bet Tygart is readying the barbecue to grill you all the way to charcoal, so you better have booked first-class tickets to a non-extradition country. Julian Assange can help you out with that one.

Oh, and Oprah has a bit of parting advice for you: “If he (that’s you!) is willing to do the work … he can be a real hero.” Such a lovely woman.

You did it, Lance. You destroyed lives. Lives of people who built theirs around you – those millions battling cancer who looked up to you, those millions who rooted for you and stood by you fighting your battles, defending you, even when one piece of evidence after another was waved at their faces every single day about what a cheating, lying bag of crap you really are.

All these people, they don’t know what to believe in any more.

Good job.

P.S: I waited a week before sitting down to write this. We in India have this political class who are forever bullied by our media into being “misquoted”, so I’d hoped you’d come up with something like that. I didn’t want to be blind-sided again. A few of us have this slight inhibition against eating their own words, you see.

So now the truth finally has its day.

P.P.S: Think I have a bit of parting advice for you too: Those who live by crap, die in it.