“I Can See The Blockbuster Now” – Mairead Farrell on the Read of the Year and the Irish Man Behind It

This is not a typical piece from me but it's possibly the biggest ever sports story that has an Irish man at the centre of it.

Over Christmas I read David Walsh’s book Seven Deadly Sins – My pursuit of Lance Armstrong.

It’s a book every one of you should read. By the end you will feel all sorts of emotions; anger, disappointment, sadness and relief.

By now most of you will have watched the two Oprah interviews where Lance Armstrong confessed to using EPO (among other things) during all of his record seven Tour De France wins.  Opinion seems to be divided on it. Some say it’s great that he’s finally admitted it, while others think he’s fallen short of totally coming clean.

I’m a huge sports fan in general. I watch all big sports tournaments and would have a look at the Tour De France highlights on TV. Back in 1998 the Tour was nicknamed the ”Tour of doping” because it was so full of drug scandals. Lance wasn’t part of that tour, at that time he was recovering from Stage 4 cancer.

So because of all those scandals you’d expect that the 1999 tour would be a very clean year, making it obviously slower?  Yet 1999 was much faster than 1998 and everyone was claiming to be whiter than white! 

David Walsh is a sports journalist who could have given up on this story years ago; his life would have been easier if he did. He lost friends because he was always seeking and speaking the truth.  He was like a Jack Russell, constantly chasing and barking at the Lance camp and his PR machine. His employers The Sunday Times were sued for £300,000 sterling for printing a story; one that we all now know was 100 per cent true. As Lance himself said, he was “an arrogant prick” who got away with this sort of behaviour. The Sunday Times are now looking to get a hefty refund from him!

To get a real insight into what Lance is like, there is one incident that made him sound quite creepy. At a press conference during one of his magnificent tours, the marquee was rammed with journalists, cameramen etc. Lance was very aware of whom the Kilkenny man was, and so for the entire press conference he answered every single question straight to David. Staring at him – no matter who asked the question, he directed every answer to him! Trying to freak him out of course, but instead it made him more defiant. I really admire people like him, because in general us Irish people seem to take a lot of shite and just accept it. If a big powerful man is telling us something we normally just say “okay!” 

So forget about the Lance Armstrong movie, what I can see is a David Walsh movie, they have 13 years worth of stories to cover – but who would play him in the blockbuster?

From here on in maybe David could just cover his home county’s hurling team; less stress and plenty of success.

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On a completely different note – restaurants be careful out there with your fancy romantic candles!

I was having coffee with my friend on Wednesday and as I stood up to put my jacket on my hair caught fire!  Luckily I didn’t have product like hair spray in it or I would’ve gone up in second. Off to get the damaged, smelly, singed bits cut out now…

 

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