And people believed. But he wasn’t that guy.
Yet are fairy tales ever built on truths? Fairy tales aren’t simply untrue, they cannot be true—involving as they do magic beans and talking mirrors and spinning wheels that turn straw to gold. Does Macur now believe that the tale Armstrong spun could never have been true, that there was no way he could have won the Tour de France seven years in a row without doping? If so, she agrees with Armstrong, who told Oprah last January that it wouldn’t have been humanly possible.
Only children—and not all children—believe in fairy tales. Fairy tales conclude in lessons and admonitions, and children solemnly consider them. Macur would like the tale of Lance Armstrong to have continued in that vein.
“With millions of people watching,” she wrote, “he could have dropped to his knees [before Oprah], wept and begged forgiveness—saying he had doped and lied about it to protect his cancer foundation.” But Macur knew Armstrong would not. “I knew Armstrong well enough to know that he couldn’t fake sincerity.” And sure enough, “in what could most kindly be described as a public-relations disaster, Armstrong failed to offer his fans what they were seeking: genuine contrition. For a few minutes here and there, he seemed sorry, but only about being caught.”