Matteo Venieri
venam@bu.edu

Lance Armstrong is one of the most controversial athletes of his generation. He went from being the protagonist of an inspiring comeback story to becoming the symbol of the worst that sports have to offer: corruption, intimidation and lies. But none of that was actually discovered during his two-and-a-half-hour interview with Oprah Winfrey from 2013. 

While I remember watching the interview when it first aired, a better understanding of the art of the interview has helped me comprehend what worked and what didn’t work – especially through the prism of the Sawatsky Method.

The main problem of this interview is one that Oprah should’ve seen coming. I think it’s quite thought-provoking that the origin of this obstacle lies both in the first and last exchange between the two. First, Oprah paraphrases him by mentioning his text to the Associated Press in anticipation of this interview. In the end, she thanks him “for trusting me to do this.”

This exchange only further emphasizes the fact that the former cyclist picked beforehand a person and a moment of his choosing to answer a series of questions which, in many cases, it’s safe to assume he already prepared for. In other words, Armstrong was in control of the interview for the majority of the time, choosing when to open up and when to skirt the issue. 

Not coincidentally, Armstrong refers to himself as someone who is very aware of how to “control the narrative” and “control every outcome.” Which is exactly what he kept doing… while apologizing for doing it.

A good example of each can be found toward the end of the first part, specifically when talking about Betsy Andreu. Oprah sets herself for failure from the beginning of this exchange, asking two closed questions that only get monosyllables in response.

(Part 1, 1:09:03)

At that point, she asks two more closed questions, which are in essence the same exact one, but simply from an opposite perspective.

(Part 1, 1:09:09)

Armstrong is clearly hesitant to elaborate more on the topic. Over the years, he badmouthed his former teammate’s wife and here he is struggling to admit his wrongdoing. As Oprah tries to formulate the same question in yet another way – and she should be praised here for trying to “attack” from different angles to get a legitimate reply – Armstrong pivots away and takes the exchange to a place where he is more comfortable. He will talk about Andreu, but only in an attempt to score a point for his reputation.

(Part 1, 1:10:13)

Here Oprah makes one of the biggest mistakes of the whole interview. Instead of remarking how he basically admitted that he called Andreu a “bitch” and digging deeper into his feelings on the matter, she moves on. I would’ve used this as the perfect opportunity to pause the interview and stick to this point as a perfect example of Armstrong’s nature of control-freak. If it’s true that part of the reason for Armstrong’s presence that day was to make amends, here he was either unwilling to do so or just lazy. Either way, Oprah should’ve paid more attention to this detail.

In total, I counted roughly 180 questions in total by the interviewer. In the process, Oprah committed all seven of Sawatsky’s deadly sins. First, I’ll give an example of no demand. Part two of the video starts with a simple observation of what other people call the former US Postal Service cycling team captain.

(Part 2, 0:03:23)

This is an odd way to elicit a reaction from Armstrong. By using the word “disgraced,” not only Oprah uses a term that is so extremely common that, I would argue, is now almost void of its original strong connotation. But, more importantly, this prevents the interviewee from defining his own state of mind. Asking “how would you describe your present state of mind?” would’ve been a better way to avoid the first sin: no demand.

In the interview, Oprah asks 32 among double, triple and, in a couple of cases, even quadruple-barreled questions – another clear violation of Sawatsky’s vademecum. The best example of that is when Oprah machine-guns through a list of feelings hoping to hit the correct one. The occasion was the speech that Armstrong gave after winning his 7^th Tour de France.

(Part 1, 0:47:10)

By doing so, she allows him to pick the adjective that he prefers, perhaps avoiding a more powerful one. Moreover, she concludes the series of questions with another command instead of using just one, concise demand.

Oprah is also guilty of overloading. While this is a less common sin, it appears early in the first part of the video. The long question below is asked after a video about Armstrong’s doping scheme. 

(Part 1, 0:13:09)

Besides showing another example of a quadruple-barreled question, this is also one with way too many topics. First, Oprah asks how he, personally, managed to control the whole doping system within the USPS team. She continues the question shifting the emphasis on the world of cycling as a whole, so that her second question asks for more of a general assessment of the doping culture of the late 90s and early 00s.

She then quotes him and asks if what she read was true, narrowing it down to the motormen getting rid of the evidence. As it often happens in these cases, Armstrong chooses the topic he is more comfortable with. Which leaves unanswered the more pressing question about the details of his illicit operation.

As far as I know, Oprah is celebrated for her way to create a bond with her guests and make a connection on an emotional level. While this makes her incur a fourth sin, bias/remarks, it’s hard to attribute to it too much weight. After all, that’s part of her style. That being said, she crosses that line countless times in these two and a half hours. The example below is by far the most significant one.

(Part 2, 0:09:05)

First and foremost, she brings a friend of hers into the equation by reading a long letter. Its somber tone changes not just the mood of that segment, but also the light under which Armstrong is perceived. As a man looking for redemption, he repeatedly tries to get ahold of every chance he gets to appear like a good person. With this letter, Oprah offers the perfect assist. The “amen” they both recite in response to the letter has a liturgical connotation that is hard to justify.

This segment at least had a shot at a positive ending, as the concept of facing demons can be fairly powerful, if used correctly. However, posed as a yes/no question, it obtains not much more than a triple confirmation and a vague sentence about his process. What is the process he talks about? We don’t know, since the conversation then moves on to Armstrong’s disease.

During the course of the interview, many trigger words are present. “Jerk,” “brazenly and defiantly,” “bully,” “mastermind,” “reckless” and others. I chose two quick examples within the exchanges provided.

(Part 1, 0:11:17)

By labeling them “suckers,” Oprah misses a huge opportunity to have her guest come up with a definition. I believe she had the right intuition to bring this up, as it certainly sounds very patronizing hearing Armstrong calling cyclists who didn’t dope “heroes.” By asking another quadruple-barreled question, he gets to pick just one of them. Of course, instead of answering the open-ended question (“What did you think of those guys?”) he limits his response to a denial to the third question, the only yes/no of the group (“Did you think they were suckers?”).

In addition, he takes this as another opportunity to distance himself from the previous request to give an estimate of the number of doped cyclists. The fact that Oprah asks four questions in one, and yet he feels compelled to add an answer to a non-existing question, makes Armstrong sound like a man with a big secret that he’s not willing to share. As a viewer, that’s frustrating. 

Something similar happens when Oprah asks Armstrong if he was “in charge.” From this question, the two go on to debate the definition of being “in charge” for the following four minutes. Here are the most significant moments of this exchange.

(Part 1, 0:23:26) 

Here Armstrong deflects his role in the culture of doping within his team by taking advantage of two yes/no questions that also have trigger words. By refuting them specifically, he tries to avoid the blame. A better question would’ve been “You were described as being in charge. What does that mean to you?” But she insists with a different strategy.

Oprah got him. By using what appears to be an example of inductive reasoning, she highlights a wide range of evidence to prove a general point: he was in fact in charge. However, toward the end, Armstrong interrupts her and hijacks the conversation again.

By making Christian Vande Velde look just like just another doped rider, Armstrong discredits him as a reliable source. Ironically, he does so by implying that other teams had a doping system in place too… right after refusing to talk about the culture of doping in his sport. Using smoke and mirrors, Armstrong got away from the corner and somehow even made a pretty valid point. That is quite impressive.

Oprah doesn’t really fall victim to the deadly sin of hyperbole. She might exaggerate when she asks if he lost “everything” and when she describes his story as “epic.” However, the risk of using such exaggerated terms is that they could create a disagreement and sabotage the entire question.

As for closed questions, she went totally overboard. Out of the 180 questions I already mentioned, more than half of them were closed-questions. For a seasoned interviewer, that’s quite a staggering amount. In Sawatsky’s terms, this is the most glaring and repeated deadly sin committed. Not surprisingly, most of her closed question elicit short, dry answers. A compelling example comes from the first video:

(Part 1, 0:18:25)

In five straight instances, Armstrong uses the word “absolutely” to reply to the different questions. But because she asks six yes/no questions, he had the option to do so. What I find almost irresponsible from a journalistic standpoint, is that none of those questions challenged him on the actual evidence showed by the 2012 USADA report. 

Once they have determined scientifically that there was less than one chance in a million that Armstrong’s blood values were natural, she had a moral obligation to use the statement to ask a different question: “How do you justify the blood values in the USADA report?”

But the most aggravating closed question happened midway to part two, the paradigm of Oprah’s most recurring mistakes.

(Part 2, 0:23:23)

Here she’s asking three closed-question in a row. The results are pretty lackluster. And yet, Armstrong gifts her with both an unscripted reaction, a burst of nervous laughter and an affirmative reply. Inexplicably, Oprah doesn’t follow up on it and decides to go back to the topic of his ex-wife.

Despite not being too familiar with the work of Oprah, it’s very hard to imagine that even a rookie interviewer would not follow up asking who that person was. She had two shots at it, but gave up far too easily. This could’ve made a big difference in the story.

At the same time, I want to defend Oprah for the way she chooses to open the show.

(Part 1 0:04:17)

Armstrong spent more than a decade denying all accusations, so I thought it was pretty powerful to open the interview with a series of yes/no questions. After lying under oath in a courtroom, he was finally coming clean with Oprah. In a sense, this gives her a lot of power and credibility. At the same time, it can’t be denied that he went to the studio fully prepared to admit responsibility for certain actions, while continuing to deny others. In this sense, I don’t think that Oprah managed to make him admit things he didn’t already plan to admit from the beginning.

This degree of preparation is most likely the reason why the interview mostly lacks real emotions. He finally opens up when he talks about his son toward the end of part two. This is perhaps the most powerful moment of the whole interview.

(Part 2, 0:37:32)

First off, this is another example of Oprah losing control of the interview. After asking what he told his son, Armstrong decides to take his time and set the scene before giving an answer. Oprah tries to make him reveal the content of that conversation four times, but she only achieves her goal when he wants. However, the question itself isn’t bad, as it would probably make Sawatsky proud, since he is very fond of “what” questions. Oprah’s insistence is justified: she wants to finally see a crack in his shield after two hours of deflections. It didn’t happen quickly, but it’s safe to say that she accomplishes her mission here.

The amount of time that took this moment to come up makes me reflect on the length of the show. Personally, I don’t recall other interviews that lasted two and a half hours straight. Perhaps, Oprah could’ve used it at her advantage, choosing to build the interview as a climax with the most important questions last, instead than mostly following a chronological order. 

In addition, I wonder if the interview would’ve been better served with fewer people: Landis, O’Reilly, Andreu, Walsh and others created a bit of a cluster and made the interview hard to follow at times. Hamilton, Ferrari and Hincapie were probably the only other characters worth mentioning.

In conclusion, I can’t honestly say that the whole interview was a fiasco. Oprah was well informed, used multimedia to back up her story and knew when to stay silent and let her guest’s emotions emerge. On the other hand, she was never fully in control of the interview, allowed Armstrong to avoid the most important questions and, much to Sawatsky’s chagrin, she committed countless deadly sins.

As a fan of cycling who followed Armstrong’s career closely, I can’t say that this interview sheds new light on the athlete, the man or even “the jerk.” While Armstrong is still on a quest to regain the trust of his fans, I want to take a moment to remember the late Marco Pantani. When the American rider talks about being the victim of a witch hunt, he should reflect on what happened to “il Pirata” and consider that, all things considered, he’s a lucky man.