Editorial: Tarnished Armstrong could turn beer sour

The 45-year-old denied doping for more than a decade before finally admitting it in a televised interview with Oprah Winfrey in January 2013.

Editorial

At the start of last month, the tarnished Lance Armstrong was the defendant in a federal courtroom in Washington as lawyers ripped apart his life.

The United States of America vLance Armstrong is a $144 million civil claim which seeks to recover funds paid to the US Postal Service cycling team.

The service paid $48 million to sponsor Armstrong's cycling team from 2000 to 2004.

The government wants that money back, arguing that the cycling team violated its sponsorship by doping and that Armstrong covered it up and lied about it in order to keep getting paid. In court, the US Government's attorney offered an unflinching description of the doping athlete.

"Lance Armstrong created a flood of lies that saturated every invoice that was submitted," US Justice Department attorney Robert Chandler told Judge Christopher Cooper. "He lied directly to the Postal Service. He had others lie directly to the Postal Service on his behalf. He made countless public statements on television and to print reporters ... false statements perpetuating his lie that he wasn't doping."

Armstrong said nothing during the hearing but his lawyer argued for the case to be thrown out. The judge will rule next year, so Armstrong has a nervous wait. If the case succeeds, and the court accepts that the mail service lost money because of Armstrong's false claims, the cyclist could face damages running into the tens of millions of dollars.

The 45-year-old denied doping for more than a decade before finally admitting it in a televised interview with Oprah Winfrey in January 2013. He is banned from cycling for life and in 2012 was stripped of all seven of his victories in the Tour de France. He also lost a bronze medal he won at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney.

In February last year, an arbitration panel in a majority ruling ordered Armstrong to pay a $14 million penalty to a Dallas promotions company in a ruling that flowed directly from his conduct.

In addition to committing what they said was "perjury on every issue" in the case, the arbitrators also found that Armstrong "intimidated and pressured other witnesses to lie."

This then is the tainted figure who for some fathomless reason Lion invited to New Zealand to tell a story that the brewing giant frames as "consequences". It seems to have escaped the company that Armstrong has spent the pastfew years evading the consequences of his cheating.

The company appears deaf to his failure to atone for his artifice, to show a shred of contrition, to acknowledge a sense of shame or apologise to his fans when they learned he had feet of clay.

Armstrong is damaged goods. Yet the creative minds at Lion, who figured Armstrong was the post-truth force for their campaign, clearly felt they knew more that such giant brands as Nike, Anheuser-Busch - another brewer - RadioShack, bicycle maker Trek, Giro, a helmet manufacturer, and FRS, which makes sports drinks.

They severed links with the disgraced cyclist rather than permit their reputations to sink with him.

Though the tyres beneath the Armstrong machine have been deflated for some years, his sponsors may have been thrilled at the attention the Texan generated during his short stay in New Zealand, where he played Pied Piper to scores of impressionable cyclists.

The strategy carries high risks. Supping with such a tainted figure needs a long spoon. The consequences of his visit could yet turn the beer very sour.