There was a time when Lance Armstrong’s downfall in cycling was
going to not only equal a lifetime of shame — but also financial
hardship.
Faced with lawsuits seeking tens of millions of dollars in
damages for his fraudulent life as a doping cheat — and an
aggressively litigious pursuer of anyone who suggested otherwise —
Armstrong’s was in strife.
But in his first US television interview since sitting down with
Oprah Winfrey in 2013, the cancer survivor who captured the
imagination of the world while winning seven Tour de France titles
— then had them stripped in the biggest doping scandal in history —
has revealed he’s more than landed on his feet.
Now 47, Armstrong reached a $5 million settlement with the US
federal government in April when they could have sought up to $100
million if the suit went to trial. But that doesn’t appear to come
close to the windfall he’s made on an early investment in Uber.
The Texas native invested $100,000 with a venture capital firm
in 2009, the bulk of which went to the ride-sharing app that he
says was valued at just $3.7 million at the time.
Today, as the company prepares for its IPO, banks have valued it
as high as $120 billion. That could make Armstrong’s shares worth
more than $3 billion, but he declined to reveal the exact figure,
simply telling CNBC[1] the number is “too
good to be true” and “it’s saved our family.”
Armstrong’s bonanza was a giant stroke of luck after he received
a phone call from former Google employee and now billionaire
investor Chris Sacca.
“He was starting his own venture capital fund, Lowercase
Capital, and he called me saying, ‘I’m looking for investors, would
you invest?’” Armstrong said.
“I’m thinking to myself, ‘This guy has a huge personality but
he’s also very smart and very well connected.’ So I invested in
Chris Sacca. I didn’t even know that he did Uber. I thought he was
buying up a bunch of Twitter shares from employees or former
employees, and the biggest investment in (the) Lowercase fund one
was Uber.”
Armstrong isn’t apologizing for his financial success, nor does
he feel he was let “off easy” in his settlement with the US
government.
“I didn’t think I got off scot-free because the settlement for
$5 million was probably the 10th settlement … once you total up all
of it — loss of guaranteed income, legal fees and settlements — it
came to $111 million,” he said. “So I don’t feel like I got off
easy.”
Armstrong: Why I remain so hated
Armstrong has a pretty solid spot in the pantheon of most hated
sports figures, but he doesn’t sound thrilled with that — or his
company.
The former cyclist isn’t quite embracing his place in sports
lore. “I do think there’s a double standard,” he said. “But I’m OK
with it.”
After his 2013 confession to Winfrey, Armstrong received strong
backlash, with a healthy amount of anger toward him lingering to
this day.
He puts it down to the way he so viciously attacked anyone who
questioned him about doping — rather than the cheating itself.
“If you polled the world, the first issue — doping in the sport
of cycling — most people have enough knowledge now to know it
looked like everybody did it,” he said.
“That isn’t the issue for people. The issue is how I so
aggressively defended myself. Being litigious, going after
people.
“This idea of bullying … I say it all the time, when I watch old
clips … the way I acted — if I saw my children act that way, it
would be a very rough conversation.”
Banned from cycling for life in 2012, Armstrong invoked another
famous cheater in Alex Rodriguez, the former New York Yankees
superstar who received a one-year ban for his role in Biogenesis,
but has been able to reclaim a positive spot in the public eye
years later.
It’s a luxury Armstrong hasn’t been afforded, despite his
Livestrong brand’s work for cancer research.
“Alex Rodriguez didn’t raise half a billion dollars and try to
save a bunch of people’s lives,” Armstrong said. “That’s kind of
the irony of this. Look, it’s great when somebody hits home runs
and maybe does an event here and there for the Girls and Boys Club.
This story held a place in people’s hearts and minds that was way
beyond those guys.”
Armstrong on that Trump tweet
Armstrong received “tens of thousands” of responses to the Oprah
interview in 2013, but one of the more memorable reactions was a
tweet by Donald Trump.
Armstrong saw the tweet. “This is six years ago, so Donald Trump
was just a loudmouth out trying to get attention and that was in a
sea of tens of thousands of those, so he was just another person,”
Armstrong said.
“Now he’s our president, somehow … whatever. He’s half-right.
He’s going to cost himself a lot of money — we know that happened.
And a lifetime of failure … well, I don’t know who judges people’s
lifetimes, whether they’re failures or successes or just OK. I
don’t feel like a failure and I’ve never felt like a failure since
then.”
References
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CNBC (www.cnbc.com) - ^
January 18, 2013
(twitter.com)