Emma O'Reilly's profile has increased and her role in the Armstrong downfall become better understood since USADA brought down the American. While she has been out in the media repeatedly in recent years, her new book is well worth a read.
Former personal soigneur to Lance Armstrong turned whistleblower, Emma O’Reilly has strongly criticised the journalist David Walsh in her new book published today.
In the “The Race to Truth: Blowing the whistle on Lance Armstrong and cycling’s doping culture”, O’Reilly says Walsh was warned that her going public on Armstrong’s doping would have a major impact on her life and that the necessary supports should be put in place for her.
However, looking back now she feels Walsh was simply out to “get Lance”, became overly obsessive and exploited her.
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She added while Armstrong was a “bully, a nasty piece of work and overly aggressive in everything about did”, she had once worked with him and had a connection with him. She could also not ignore the cancer fundraising and awareness raising work he had done.
“Now, I never had that connection with David Walsh,” she writes.
“So I just feel I was exploited by him, and the Sunday Times. I also feel David got too single-minded about his story. But we are bonded by this, now, and I put him in the acknowledgements of the book, because he was an important part of the journey.
“I will always be fond of David, but this is my story of what happened over those 10 or 12 years. In all fairness, I probably wouldn’t be telling my story if it wasn’t for David.
“I’d already lost a huge amount of trust in David, but more than that, I saw an unrelenting obsessiveness in the man, the journalist, out to ‘get Lance’ at pretty much any cost. That was what mattered to David, not me, nor probably any of his other sources.
“In my mind, however, I always felt that it wasn’t Lance or any of the riders who were the problem. It was the whole culture of cycling.”
Where it all began: In the middle of the Irish scene with the Telecom Eireann team in the late 1980s or early 199s0. Riders from left to right: Ian Wogan, Terry McManus, Paul Keogh, Peter Morton, O'Reilly, Julian Dalby and Mick McLynskey (Photo courtesy of Ian Wogan)
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She continues of Walsh: “He’d hung me out to dry - but worse than that, the publisher had even openly warned him of the impact this would have on my life and had recommended proper support. Something I feel I never got.
“He admitted the interview I’d given him on my sofa that hot July day was the biggest story he’d ever get in his life. ‘It was my Christmas,’ he enthused, as I found myself rolling my eyes. ‘Yes, David, your Christmas was at my expense’. ”
While the criticisms of Walsh are damaging, he still remains the journalist most closely associated with bringing Armstrong down.
And despite writing about cycling for the best part of two decades before deciding to go on a crusade against drugs, he has commercially exploited the Armstrong story much more that the man who broke the real ground, Paul Kimmage.
It was not until Armstrong arrived back on the Tour de France in 1999 that Walsh made a career out of asking the difficult questions of cycling’s well known and well established doping culture.
By that time, Walsh was also writing about other sports and so did not need access to riders like he did with Kelly and Roche to build his early career.
He has been asked before why he waited so long to properly raise the doping issue. He has said he was perhaps too enthralled by the sport and its stars to ask the questions that he and the rest of the media should have been asking.
Rather than glaze over the drugs issue, he has admitted he ignored it.
“At that time, I still found a way of thinking to myself that if I interview guys and I ask about doping, I will not question their answers. I didn’t want to go there”.
O'Reilly's book, somewhat bizarrely, carries a foreword written by Armstrong. It's published by Random House and is on the shelves today, Friday.
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