Yes, you heard right. First interview in Vanity Fair is online now.
Lance Armstrong Rides Again – Vanity Fair
It’s a masterful piece of PR all round because this comeback isn’t about bike racing, it’s about cancer. Go on, you try not inviting him to your race now. Bon chance with that ASO.
Reading the article this is a man who cares so much about his own reputation and his cancer project that he no longer cares whose back it puts up. There’s a veiled threat that if ASO want to be awkward he’ll just get Nicolas Sarkozy to lean on them. They may own the race but France owns the spectacle as a piece of its cultural patrimony.
He’s put a message on the Livestrong site about it:
Lance’s Comeback to Cycling in 2009
(which I’m bloody glad he did otherwise I might have had to link to the article on Perez Hilton which is mentioning it. Has he spoken to the cycling press? Hahahahaha! It’s on PA and so the newswires, why bother?
Seriously, I’m excited because actually I think a Lance comeback complete with a whole “doing it transparently and clean” schtick will kick cycling way up the sporting agenda because it’s not just a cycling story. Everyone in sport will want a part of this story, the haterz, the fanboys, the geeks and your mum will want to know about it.
Now where did I put the popcorn?