CNN video reveals turmoil caused by rider’s inability to accept she told the truth
In complete contrast to what was a restrained, emotionally-distant admission of long-term doping by Lance Armstrong, former friend Betsy Andreu was close to tears last night when she was interviewed by CNN’s Anderson Cooper on the former rider’s confession.
She is the wife of Armstrong’s former team-mate Frankie Andreu and the three were at one time close companions. That tie between Armstrong and the couple gradually disintegrated and turned to outright conflict when they testified under oath that they had had heard him admit to his cancer doctors in 1996 that he had used a variety of banned substances.
Called liars for many years by Armstrong and his legal team, as well as worse insults for Betsy Andreu herself, last night’s Oprah Winfrey confession was a chance for the Texan to make amends. However while he admitted that others such as former team soigneur Emma O’Reilly had told the truth, he chose not to verify what the Andreus had said.
Asked for her reaction by Cooper, Andreu was visibly upset. “I’m really disappointed,” she said, voice trembling with emotion. “He owed it to me.
“You owed it to me, Lance, and you dropped the ball. After what you’ve done to me, what you’ve done to my family, and you couldn’t own up to it. And now we’re supposed to believe you? You have one chance at the truth. This is it.”
“If he is not going to tell the truth, if he can’t say ‘yes, the hospital room happened,’ then how are we to behave everything else he is saying? We are already questioning.”
Andreu believes that by refusing to say they were right, by leaving things in limbo, Armstrong is lacking either the courage or the integrity to put things right in terms of restoring their good names.
“If the hospital room didn’t happen, just say it didn’t happen,” she explained. “But he won’t do it, because it did happen. But if this is his way of saying, ‘I just don’t want to go there, we’ll give it to her,’ that is not good enough. That is not being transparent. That’s not being completely honest…that’s skirting the issue.”
“I want to believe that Lance wants to come clean, but this is giving me an indication I can’t.”
Cooper then cut to an extract from the Winfrey programme, playing the section where she and Armstrong speak about the Andreus. What was perhaps most jarring about it was the facial expressions of both the interviewer and interviewee, which can be seen in CNN’s video below.
Oprah: “It is well with the two of you…have you made peace?
“No,” he said back, with a smile.
“Okay,” Winfrey responded.
“Because they have been hurt too badly, and a 40 minute conversation isn’t enough
“Did you call Betsy Andreu?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“Did she take your call?”
“She did.”
“Was she telling the truth about the Indiana hospital?”
“I am not going to take that on. I am going to put that [question] on hold. She asked me and I asked her not to talk about that. It is a private conversation. I spoke to Frankie [Andreu] as well.
Winfrey: “Did you make peace?”
“No, because they have been hurt too badly. A 40 minute conversation isn’t enough.”
“You called her names, said she was crazy…”
“I did call her crazy. I think she’s be okay with me saying this… But I’m going to take the liberty to say it. I told her ‘I called you crazy, I called you a bitch, I called you all these things…but I never called you fat.’
“She thought I said she was a fat, crazy bitch.”
CNN moved back to showing Andreu, who was clearly very affected.
“Well, I guess we know why I was, all these years, putting up with that. How would you act? Sweet as apple pie?
“He shouldn’t have done Oprah. This was too big to…he shouldn’t have gone on here. This is going to be a long process for him, but he is approaching it in the wrong way. That exchange right there…it has me furious.
“This is a guy who used to be my friend, who decimated me,” she continued, emotions fully visible and almost crying. “He could have come clean. He owed it to me. He owes it to the sport that he destroyed. And don’t - when he says he doesn’t like the UCI, that’s a bunch of crap.”