This goes beyond cheating, lying or riding a bike.
Lance Armstrong, the disgraced, banned cyclist who prostrates his toned and worthless body tonight and tomorrow on the altar of Oprah Winfrey, is worse than shameless.
From the time he was a young pedal-pusher born Lance Gunderson (he was adopted by stepdad Terry Armstrong), to the days he spent slumming like a groupie in the company of Tiger Woods, Bono and Sheryl Crow, his entire adult life was a fraud fueled by boundless ego and greed.
Make no mistake. This was not a victimless crime.
Armstrong based a profitable, one-man industry on his years-long denials that he took dope to make him the fastest cyclist on the planet. He rode his bike to superstardom, lucrative sponsorships and the Livestrong charitable cancer foundation, while trashing his critics’ reputations, careers and finances. Detractors were crushed like roadkill.
Worse, he fooled a mesmerized public into believing that he was a good guy. He even came to believe it himself.
And now, he wants your forgiveness, understanding or, at least, to avoid prosecution for playing a celebrity athlete without natural stamina or good sportsmanship. For portraying a role model without a speck of talent or ordinary morality.
But one thing has been lost amid l’affaire Lance Armstrong.
It’s the way deception and disloyalty to those who loved him were embedded into every crevice of the seven-time Tour de France cheater.
You can tell a lot about a man by the way he runs his personal affairs. Badly.
Not least importantly, Armstrong ran over his former wife, Kristin, and their three kids, the very people who stood by him throughout his battle against testicular cancer. He left them when he could snag a table at any hot restaurant, and took up with singer Sheryl Crow.
Then, after three years of dating and a three-month engagement, he dumped poor Sheryl in 2006, immediately after she was diagnosed with breast cancer. He confessed to Men’s Health magazine that he couldn’t cope with the singer’s disease. Nice.
He soon coped very well, having two kids with a girlfriend.
Armstrong mauled his friends and all the people who had the misfortune of loving and worshipping a man who perpetrated perhaps the greatest hoax in sporting and philanthropic history. Think: Bernie Madoff on steroids. John Edwards on Viagra.
There was Betsy Andreu, wife of former teammate Frankie. The Andreus testified before the US Anti-Doping Agency that they heard Armstrong admit in 1996 to using drugs. Andreu said she received a voicemail from an Armstrong “henchman,’’ according to Yahoo! Sports columnist Dan Wetzel, saying, “I hope somebody breaks a baseball bat over your head. I also hope that one day, you have adversity in your life and you have some type of tragedy that will . . . definitely make an impact on you.”
London’s Sunday Times settled a libel suit with Armstrong for $500,000 after the paper reported, truthfully, that he took performance-enhancing drugs. Will he give the money back?
There was his former personal assistant, Mike Anderson, who yesterday said his life was made hell and he fled to New Zealand after discovering Armstrong’s drug stash in 2004.
Armstrong’s interview with Oprah is designed to win back the love. He should be prosecuted instead.
Armstrong must not get away with a single, deadly sin.
Stupor-models ignore misery
It’s a supermodel superstorm!
In the midst of the biggest humanitarian crisis in city history, the recovery from Hurricane Sandy, Vogue magazine and heroic rescue workers proved that human life ranks a distant second to money, glamour and haute couture.
This spread is seriously twisted. Vogue’s February issue contains a two-page photo — proudly displayed on the NYPD’s Facebook page (above) — of Brooklyn-based police rescuers standing before a helicopter used to rescue terrified storm survivors.
The men are aided by supermodels.
Shot by celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz, the cops strut their stuff along with German shepherds and two skinny babes clad in Carolina Herrera and Rodarte. The ladies look too emaciated to lift a flashlight, let alone traumatized children.
“We just came together and put our air-sea rescue crews into effect and pulled people from the top of their roofs into the helicopter,’’ pilot Dennis DeRienzo told the mag. No word if crews made room for the models who, fortunately, take up little space.
FDNY first responders are seen on the next page near a firehouse in devastated Far Rockaway. The crew “had to first outrun the waves pummeling its own neighborhood, then set about rescuing others,’’ said paramedic Jason Verspoor.
But grinning firefighters took the time to link arms lasciviously with two starving women, one dressed in an impractical Narciso Rodriguez camisole and pencil skirt, the other in a Diane von Furstenberg dress.
National Guardsmen, some with arms folded idly, are seen communing with models unable to lift bottles of water from a loading dock. Also featured are Con Edison workers and those in the intensive-care unit at Bellevue Hospital, cradling babies while hanging with gals in Michael Kors and Marc Jacobs.
Who saved the city while the models roared? Heads should roll for this.
Jail $uit ability
Inmates run the asylum. People locked up on Rikers Island post names of lawyers near the jail’s pay phones, The Post reported, so they can sue the city Department of Correction. This cost taxpayers $111.1 million over the past five years.
Some suits are about beds inmates claim are too small. Often, the city settles rather than hold costly trials. Enough!
Fight the lawsuits. Maybe they’ll go away.
Jodie and Jew hater
Actress and director Jodie Foster moved some folks to tears at the Golden Globes — when she gave a shout-out to Mel Gibson.
Jodie, 50, was praised for sort of coming out of the closet, something that neither surprises nor offends in this day and age. But the anti-Semite Gibson, who clung to Foster like a shiksa life raft, was overlooked.
Be more careful about the company you keep, Jodie.
NYU co-eds’ sweet tooth
Co-eds at pricy New York University were ranked second in the nation last year among those who seek sugar daddies to pay college costs, after the peaches at Georgia State University. Try harder! In 2011, hungry NYU gals were in first place.
That’s according to seekingarrangement.com. (Columbia University ranked 18). Parents, be warned.
Send your daughter to a city university. Or a nunnery.