On an episode of “Freakonomics Radio,” Lance Armstrong recounted a time when a restaurant-goers screamed “F– you!” at him.
In the episode, titled “Has Lance Armstrong Finally Come Clean?,” the cyclist spoke about his childhood training, his seven Tour de France wins, and his ultimate fall from grace. In 2012, he was stripped of his titles after it was revealed that he had been taking performance-enhancing hormones, among other drugs.
Now, he’s trying to make amends.
“Nobody wants to hear that a certain segment of any population is pissed at them or hates them, or whatever,” he told host Stephen Dubner. “And for a long, long time that really, really affected me and bothered me.”
Armstrong discussed one particular event that took place in 2017, when he was getting into an Uber outside of a Denver restaurant. One of the people sitting on the bar patio began screaming obscenities at him, and then everyone on the patio joined in.
“I’ve never had that happen. I was like, ‘Oh.’ I was shaking,” Armstrong said.
Instead of retaliating, he called the manager, gave him his credit card number, and instructed him to buy the customers who yelled at him their meals and drinks.
“Tell them that I understand,” Armstrong recalled saying over the phone.