Lance has plenty of talent and is a superb athlete, for the few times he does compete. I'm totally obsessed with the technical stuff- I mentally take the notes and when I talk to people about training, I bring things up based on how he views things. I'll never deny that he is an exceptional athlete, nor that he's an inspiration to the underdog and to people who have serious illnesses, because he's been there. However, at the same time, if this show depends on his personality, then they're in for a big surprise. He doesn't exude a lot of it, and if not for his egotism, I think the show would be pretty slim pickins, which is why they probably felt like they had to go into other aspects of his life- too many people would have tuned out if they'd seen Lance talk about the technical aspects, and then the producers actually TRIED to interview Lance and get inside his head. I just haven't seen one interview he's given where I've walked away saying "Wow!". I more walk away shaking my head wondering why I tried to stay up that long to watch that nonsense. He's a great athlete, but whooooo... watch out if he starts to open up about anything else. He's pretty clumsy when it comes to public speaking. So I guess to make up for that, they have to go into his relationship with Sheryl Crow or show him jetting around or doing Subaru commercials, etc. to fill up the void. Besides all that, it is what someone else said- a lot of people are short on attention spans, and if he did spend the full 30 minutes focussed on the riding aspect, I suspect quite a few people would zone out, which is unfortunate, because that's the real fascinating stuff, as far as I'm concerned.

AND that was the makeup lady- actually it was the lady picking the clothes out he'd wear for some commercial or other. And the journalist was like "what would your wife say if she found out some woman was watching you change?", and Lance said something like "well, I have no wife", and laughed. I was very surprised that it didn't get cut, despite the hundreds of hours of filming that obviously is taped for this, and I would have thought Lance would have insisted on seeing every part of the episode BEFORE the airing so if there was something he said that was totally outragous, stupid, or gave away trade secrets, or whatever, it could be edited out. That's the whole point of the tactlessness of the comment. Why was it even aired to begin with when they have a lot more footage they could have went with? And why was it even said in the first place? And why couldn't he have been a bit more sensitive or thought about it a bit before answering? Etc. I guess these are questions we'll never have the answers for. And I repeat, I really hope his kids weren't watching that night. Or Kristin. It was thoughtless, insensitive, and tactless, just to put a few descriptions to what he said.

Koffee