You’ve got to hand it to Lance Armstrong – he’s a fighter. Sure, Tiger Woods may look like a shoo-in for this year’s Biggest Comeback from a Spectacular Fall from Grace by a Sporting Star of the 2000s. But Armstrong isn’t giving up hope of the title just yet. Especially not when he’s been laying the groundwork for the past two years.

Lance Armstrong: David Millar is ‘last person’ who should lead cyclists’ union Read more

His podcasts – the ultimate safe space for the celebrity who wants to work again – have gained a large following since he launched Wedū, a media company so hip it requires a macron to ensure you pronounce it properly. According to Armstrong, it was set to make $1m during the three weeks of this year’s Tour de France thanks to subscription fees, merchandise and loyal sponsors such as the tequila company Patrón. That’s a lot of Lance-a-ritas.

This week Armstrong has weighed in on the election for president of the professional cyclists’ union. Specifically, his distaste at the candidacy of David Millar, a man who was once his teammate but who committed the solecism of calling on him to come clean back when he was still getting away with it.

You’d think their shared life experiences might have earned Millar a little empathy. But Armstrong has no time for his former brother-in-arms, even when those arms all had artificially high blood counts. Armstrong was outraged that Millar had the audacity to lobby for a role in the sport he contaminated. “Millar is probably the last person that would come to mind for this role,” he said. It’s charmingly endearing, isn’t it, to know that he can’t think of anyone who might be a worse candidate.

Armstrong’s objections are that Millar will not provide the riders with the protection and the strong voice they deserve. Armstrong was, of course, known to be passionate about the welfare of the peloton when he was competing. Although it is perhaps a sign of how much he has grown that giving them a say has worked its way so far up his list of priorities. He wasn’t quite so keen for his colleagues or employees to be heard when they were on the brink of exposing him.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Lance Armstrong and David Millar chat in Troyes during the 2003 Tour de France. Photograph: Tom Jenkins/The Guardian

But the world today is a very different one from that dark time, back in 2012, when that giant conspiracy was determined to dirty his halo. Happily, these days it is possible to rewrite and even simply ignore the unfortunate things one has said and done in the past. In fact, Armstrong’s understanding of how malleable truth can be is surely only to his long-term credit in today’s public sphere.

In the era of our post-truth politics, brass neck and sheer gall are precious commodities. So perhaps when he was accusing Floyd Landis of being “desperate for attention and money”, calling his masseuse an alcoholic whore and deriding the investigation against him as an “unconstitutional witch hunt”, he was just ahead of his time.

It can be no coincidence that, on the day that Armstrong finally gave up his legal defence, there was one voice warning him against it. “I never thought he was a quitter,” tweeted Donald Trump. “He should immediately reconsider or his legacy is ruined.”

Let us hope it brings president Trump joy to know he was mistaken. That, six years after Armstrong’s lifelong ban from the sport he had disgraced, the man who determinedly cheated, lied and bullied his way to an almost successful cover-up is back in our lives with a top-10 podcast.

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It was, Armstrong told his listeners in July, “super humbling” to be this popular again. “For me it was really humbling that it was almost a validation. I mean you had a show that had five million downloads in three weeks,” he added, humbly. As his own website asks: “Who believes that the most meaningful revelations emerge at the far edge of your limits – that there are flashes of self-truth in moments of suffering?” We du.

Whether Armstrong has actually attained such enlightenment, only he and his buddy Oprah may ever know. It would certainly be easier to enjoy his rebranding and his range of T-shirt logos – “Sūffer”, “Soūl” and “Get Oūt” – if the contrition he offered for his past actions felt less self-absorbed. Take his recent appearance on the Freakonomics podcast, in which the interviewer congratulated him on how far he had come. And it was true, Armstrong did say he understood why people hated him and that “people had suffered this tremendous sense of betrayal”, which is almost but not quite the same thing as saying you feel ashamed that you betrayed them.

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He pointed out that he had tried to make amends to those he’d wronged. “This thing’s cost me $111m,” he said. “Everybody’s been paid back.” He also, however, said he wouldn’t change a thing and complained he had been treated unfairly compared to Alex Rodriguez, who was allowed to return to baseball after his drugs scandal.

Which brings us back to Millar. Armstrong’s ongoing gripe at the cycling authorities is how the big fish caught in the dopers’ net were made examples of while the small fry were “given complete passes”.

One can’t help speculating that Millar’s own rehabilitation is part of the “hypocritical and unfair” situation Armstrong now discerns. Hypocrisy? Unfairness? How very dare they. Armstrong’s own return to the cycling world is surely a matter of earnest, selfless rehabilitation, a precursor to a second act that will win us all over again.

As the man himself says, this thing’s cost him enough. He’s had to pass up Dancing with the Stars every year just to look sorry. Perhaps it’s time he headed to the jungle for I’m a Celebrity. Now that’s what I call rehabilitation.