Cycle of Lies

The Fall of Lance Armstrong

By: Juliet Macur

Narrated by: Carrington MacDuffie

The definitive account of Lance Armstrong's spectacular rise and fall.

In June 2013, when Lance Armstrong fled his palatial home in Texas, downsizing in the face of multimillion-dollar lawsuits, Juliet Macur was there—talking to his girlfriend and children and listening to Armstrong's version of the truth. She was one of the few media members aside from Oprah Winfrey to be granted extended one-on-one access to the most famous pariah in sports.

At the center of Cycle of Lies is Armstrong himself, revealed through face-to-face interviews.

But this unfolding narrative is given depth and breadth by the firsthand accounts of more than one hundred witnesses, including family members whom Armstrong had long since turned his back on—the adoptive father who gave him the Armstrong name, a grandmother, an aunt. Perhaps most damning of all is the taped testimony of the late J.T. Neal, the most influential of Armstrong's many father figures, recorded in the final years of Neal's life as he lost his battle with cancer just as Armstrong gained fame for surviving the disease.

In the end, it was Armstrong's former friends, those who had once occupied the precious space of his inner circle, who betrayed him. They were the ones who dealt Armstrong his fatal blow by breaking the code of silence that shielded the public from the grim truth about the sport of cycling—and the grim truth about its golden boy, Armstrong.

Threading together the vivid and disparate voices of those with intimate knowledge of the private and public Armstrong, Macur weaves a comprehensive and unforgettably rich tapestry of one man's astonishing rise to global fame and fortune and his devastating fall from grace.

An Excellent Read

While I was already familiar with the whole sordid Lance Armstrong debacle, this excellent book revealed to me a lot of things I didn't know, and I came away feeling a little different about him than I did before. I truly believe he was just part of the giant doping mess that is professional cycling, where if you want to win the biggest races, you must go along with the plan. Still it's no excuse for the way he treated people; there is no excuse for that.

Excellent along w/ Wheels of Lies

I bought this book along time ago and when I replace my phone at the time there's no way to keep the audiobook so I bought it again because I'm a victim of a violent crime and the violence the lies the gaslighting threats did not stop there plus NYPD joined in and every court I sue they lied like they were Lance Armstrong they weren't shy and they were protected so I love listening over and over to his books. It's so upsetting when people try to brush off what Lance Armstrong did! He was a bully who is a bully cheater liar cheater win threaten people he had no remorse....This book in the wheel of lies are excellent highly recommend them

long lose armstrong

armstrong is pathetic and childish - accountable to nothing. people don’t like him because of who he chooses to be not the fact that he takes drugs while he cycles

great writing and narration - very well-done

Couldn't put it down.

I found this book fascinating. The performance was excellent. A great look into the professional cycling world.

Liar, cheater, doper, hypocrite . . .

weak character, selfish, cruel, a bully. I could go on but you get the idea. I found this book fascinating, almost a character study. Macur includes Lance Armstrong's family background history and his sports history. She does a fine job of detailing the history of cycling and how it became deeply interlaced with the doping mentality. You can come to understand how doping (with chemicals, testosterone, blood cells, etc.) caught on and why the belief that you could not really compete without doping was integral to the sport for so long. Perhaps it was true that one could not really compete without following suit.

Still, you have Lance Armstrong, an idol and winner, whom our youth and our entire country looked up to and believed in, when he swore he never doped. And then, such a hero for conquering cancer, a cancer that certainly had a terrible prognosis. Who could ever believe that someone who came so close to death would subsequently continue to dope? It just wasn't fathomable.

In my opinion, the narrator, Carrington MacDuffie, does an admirable job and is excellent with male voices. This listening experience, while eliciting many negative emotions on my part, was really worthwhile. Highly recommended.