David Walsh

The Program David Walsh

464 pages, paperback. The tie-in edition of the stunning new film, directed by Stephen Frears and starring Chris O'Dowd (Moone Boy, The IT Crowd) as David Walsh and Ben Foster (3.10 to Yuma) as Lance Armstrong. This book, previously published as Seven Deadly Sins, tells the thrilling story of Walsh's thirteen-year quest to prove that the world's most famous cancer survivor and cycling superstar Lance Armstrong had built his reputation on a lie. From Armstrong's first Tour win in 1999, Walsh was one of very few to question what we were seeing and, in his search for the truth, he was dubbed a 'troll' by the Texan cyclist and found himself ostracised by those who didn't want to upset the narrative that Armstrong seemed to present to a sport in urgent need of renewal. Eventually, thanks in large part to Walsh's persistence, Armstrong was stripped of his titles, banned for life from the sport and forced into admitting to Oprah that he had, after all, been doping and that his seven Tour de France victories were little more than his seven deadly sins. It was one of the biggest sporting stories of the century, and the tale of how it came about is now the basis of a wonderful film.