rojo wrote:
But Lance didn't have to pull the deny, deny, deny. He didn't have to say in interviews that if he had doped - it would mean the whole cancer thing was a farce. He chose do that just as he chose to dope.
[...]
Why doesn't Lance just come out now and cry and say, "You know what. I doped. So did everyone else. I'm sorry."
Lance could have pulled a Bjarne Riis. And he even left out the "So did everyone else" part and claimed he did it all on his own, although everybody obviously knows that the teams he rode for had systematic doping programs, Gewiss-Ballan and Team Telekom. Riis lost a lot of goodwill but he's still a successful and highly respected team director.
OK, the stakes were higher for Lance because (a) in the post-Festina era doping has been investigated and enforced as a crime, (b) he not only doped, he also allegedly paid to have positive tests covered up, and (c) once there are legal proceedings you can't simply hold a press conference to say "Yes I did it, let's move on" without serious repercussions.
But at the end of the day, people dislike Lance not so much because he doped as because he's been lying through his teeth, campaigning aggressively for his innocence and his smug holier-than-everybody-else attitude, and stringing people along on the whole Livestrong scam. Not to mention that he got to nail Sheryl Crow back when she was still a dish.