Betsy Andreu, the wife of former Lance Armstrong teammate Frankie Andreu, has appeared on more television programs than I can count these last couple of days, answering questions about Sir Dick-A-Lot and his interview with Oprah Winfrey. This couple suffered the ire of Armstrong for many years, and now it's their time to shout from the rooftops that they have been vindicated at last.
She began on Anderson Cooper's AC360 program with some seriously righteous indignation. The major beef with Armstrong seems to be that he refuses to cop to the 1996 Indiana University hospital room admission to an unknown doctor during his cancer treatment when, while Betsy and Frankie, among others, overheard Armstrong rattle off the pharmaceutical litany of PED's he was gorging on up until that point in his now-ignominious career. Armstrong has continuously denied this event, and Stephanie McIlvain, then a representative of Oakley sunglasses, one of Armstrong's major personal sponsors, lied under oath when questioned about the admission.
McIlvain was also recorded during a phone conversation with Greg Lemond stating that if she were asked to testify in court, she would tell the truth about Armstrong's hospital confession. Initially, she was portrayed as a struggling single mother who could not afford to piss off one of her company's major endorsers because she needed the medical benefits for her sick son. Turns out she was just an opportunistic liar who, despite having a boyfriend higher up in the company, screwed Lance while she was dating her boyfriend. Talk about a class act.
Ever since then, Armstrong has done his evil and conniving best to paint Betsy as a jealous, shrill harpy with an ax to grind. Armstrong has gotten Frankie fired from more jobs than an ex-con out on work release. Yet the Andreus both stood their ground and never wavered from the initial testimony they gave at Armstrong's SCA deposition in 2005-06. They've been painted as liars until practically the other day, and in Armstrong's world, everyone who accused him of taking PED's was lying except for him.
Despite living in the type of world that enabled a bully and serial liar like Lance Armstrong to attain an unprecedented of amount of wealth and international fame in relation to any other professional cyclist who ever lived. Despite the pressures, Betsy never relented from the truth, and she and her husband stand as beacons of integrity and courage, qualities that Armstrong whored for his own benefit until he had no choice but to tell the world at least a portion of the truth.
We have Betsy Andreu to thank for that.
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