OLN is slowly weening us off of 'round the clock cycling action on TV.
After three weeks of Tour de France coverage, the Outdoor Life Network has been airing this week an hour-long interview with 7-time Tour winner Lance Armstrong from his home in Texas.
The interview with Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen airs at 8-9 p.m. ET on Saturday and midnight to 1 a.m. Sunday. Those might not be great times, but set your VCR.
For those who miss the interview, The Paceline (the Discovery Channel Pro Cycling Team official fan website sponored by Discovery) has transcribed the first segment of the Armstrong interview, which deals with the 2005 Tour de France. They promise more transcripts.
Armstrong comments about not wanting to wear the yellow jersey the first day after David Zabriskie lost it in a team time trial crash:
“We tried to make a good gesture and not start with it, but (race director) Jean Marie Leblanc wasn't having any of the good gesture that day.”
Being abandoned by his team:
“It was an interesting tactic leading up to Pailhères in that you saw it coming, and immediately I was isolated, that’s the bad news, but the good news was that I was only isolated for about a kilometer. My guys can’t ride a kilometer sprint like their guys can.”
And the apparent in-fighting at T-Mobile:
“No offense, but days like that where one would be out there and another would chase them down – without naming names, we all saw the race – even at the bottom of Col d'Aubisque, one climb later Vino goes away and Kloden chases him down with Ullrich on his wheel – we all sort of sat back and said ‘What the heck is that?’ “
One of the things that strikes me in these interviews is that Armstrong sounds like one smart cookie. The guy can communicate. He doesn't fall back on platitudes and locker-room banter in these interviews. Even after finishing a 4-hour race, he's always able to speak coherently and be engaged in what he's saying.
That's just his public persona, but it's a good one. It will be interesting to see what happens to this 7-time Tour winner. I don't think he'll drop out of the public eye.
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