He also had to maliciously poke a stick in the spokes of anyone who questioned him or called out his cheating.

“Anybody that crossed his path or didn’t go along with his plan, he set out to take them down,” former teammate Frankie Andreu said on ESPN. “And he was very powerful and influential and did take them down.”

After lying about the doping bitterly for years, and even using legal action to punish the truth-tellers in his midst, Lance Armstrong finally admitted to Oprah Winfrey that he used performance-enhancing drugs to win, among other things, seven Tour de France titles.

Even in supposedly coming clean, Armstrong cowered in the safety of Oprah’s couch rather than face the scrutiny of the working press.

Sorry, not good enough. It’s certainly not good enough for the World Anti-Doping Agency, which has said he needs to confess under oath in order to seek a change in his lifetime ban. The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency blistered Armstrong and his cheating in a scathing 1,000-page report last year.

Lance Armstrong is, apparently, the last to know all this.

This man cynically sought the adulation of young and old, all while taking cheating to new heights. He has diminished his sport, disillusioned millions, disappointed staff and supporters of his former Livestrong charity, shamed his country and cast a cloud of suspicion on others in similar positions who may, actually, be innocent.

Other than that, no problem.

Armstrong has fallen behind in a race before. He’s never had this much ground to make up.