IT was somewhat fitting that last week’s double header between the queen of American TV, Oprah Winfrey, and the disgraced former cycling icon Lance Armstrong started with a Time Trial.

It lasted just 60 seconds during which time Winfrey posed Armstrong six direct questions in a potent yes/no interlude that saw the former Tour de France exposed as an out and out cheat.

There was nowhere for him to go – a minute of compelling and revealing television.

That explosive opening set the bar very high for the rest of that first programme and the follow-up the next day and the interrogation never reached the same heights again.

However, Winfrey kept to her task and was tenacious with him over his doping programmes and bullying tactics with team-mates during his seven-year drug-enhanced supremacy in the Tour de France.

Whether a television programme is the right place for him to finally admit his perpetuated wrong doing is a fair question to pose.

And did this form of confession in any way seemingly lessen the scale of deceit that Armstrong was involved in?

Possibly, however, he came over as a cold, calculating individual – rather than what he probably wanted us to see him as.

Certainly some courageous journalists have pursued the truth about Lance Armstrong for years and they will be the best judges as to the sincerity or otherwise of the Texan’s small screen performance.

This is a manipulative man whose past proves he cannot be trusted.

Watch this space for where the story goes next – probably into the US law courts and back into some seriously-researched newsprint.

Meanwhile, let’s take some satisfaction from the fact that Armstrong has finally come clean, so to speak, and in a compulsive 60 seconds – one minute that finally debunked one very flawed individual.