Chris Horner joins Lance Armstrong in raging against the machine

"I couldn't believe it," Horner told US cycling magazine Peloton after his new team, Airgas-Safeway, was not named among the 18 teams invited to the Tour of California.

"I don't know what the promoters are thinking. They've obviously done harm to the race by not bringing me. You left the only current rider with a grand-tour résumé who was going to show up, and I'm a past champion there."

You can understand Horner's frustration. Obviously. After failing to secure an extension at Lampre-Merida or to find any other home on the WorldTour, Horner, the 2013 Vuelta champion, was forced to join a third tier American team in the hope that his glittering résumé would be enough to secure an invite to the big domestic races, such as the Tour of California, a race he won back in 2011.

But the gamble has backfired.

"I figured we were already in," Horner said. "Clearly they didn't have to bring us, because we're not a WorldTour team or anything like that. We needed the invite and it wasn't a sure thing, but when you're putting on one of the biggest races in the US, you'd think you'd want the biggest US rider to go, so I figured it was a given."

For many, this was an odd thing to say - after all, Tejay van Garderen's BMC has been invited; for others, Horner's assertion that his name is most recognisable in US cycling was equally bizarre - particularly when that same name, it is claimed, appears multiple times covered by a black rectangle in USADA's Reasoned Decision, which famously brought down Armstrong back in 2013.

Perhaps it is the baggage that goes hand in hand with his allegedly redacted name and the recent therapeutic use exemption for cortisteroids that stopped Horner from defending his Vuelta crown that ultimately ensured his team's non-selection?

"Clearly I'm old enough to know that politics exists and that it's a possibility," Horner told Peloton. "I'm not saying it's there or not there, but I'm the number one rider in the US and certainly the strongest and have the best résumé for stage racing."

It must further rankle Horner to see that in Airgas-Safeway's absence, a berth was given to debutants Hincapie Racing Team - an outfit set up by a man whose name was very much not redacted in USADA's Reasoned Decision.

Funnily enough, Big George and the other riders who testified against Lance Armstrong are also in the news this week after the shamed star's lawyers sent subpoenas to his former team-mates as part of the Texan's defence in his ongoing US Government whistleblower lawsuit.

Money matters aside, Armstrong is still angry that the likes of Hinacapie, Christian Vande Velde, Dave Zabriskie, Levi Leipheimer, Tom Danielson, Tyler Hamilton, Floyd Landis and Frankie Andreu were given the chance to speak out against the doping culture at US Postal but with assurances that they would not receive life-time bans.

This, Armstrong told the BBC in quite a revealing interview, goes very much against USADA's continued assertion that Armstrong was given the same opportunity as everyone else. "I never got that call," a visibly haggard Armstrong told reporter Dan Roan for a special 30-minute documentary entitled 'Lance Armstrong: The Road Ahead' that aired on Thursday evening.

And it appears that Armstrong has found an ally from quite an unlikely source.

Former UCI President Pat McQuaid - the man who once famously threw the Texan onto the fire with the words "there's no place in cycling for Lance Armstrong" - has leapt to his former bete-noir's defence, telling the BBC himself that he holds sympathy for Armstrong and his banned-for-life plight.

"I do have a little sympathy for him," said the man once accused of accepting bribes from Armstrong in order to brush a positive test from the 1999 Tour de Suisse under the table.

"I am very much aware that he was made a scapegoat," McQuaid, for whom the notion of being a scapegoat is hardly foreign, continued. "[I'm aware] that there was a witch-hunt after Armstrong: USADA wanted a big name to bring down and they weren't really interested in the smaller riders at all."

For his part, Armstrong went on a charm offensive towards a man who had often supported him during his career, but who had bitten back since his fall from grace. In a clear swipe at the English chap who replaced McQuaid as the top of the UCI food chain, Armstrong said, "If McQuaid had made the same decisions [Brian] Cookson has made in his first year, he would have been lynched."

"Do we like what we have got so far?" Armstrong asked, undermining the man who he feels has gone back on his word by not reducing his life-time ban in return for the American appearing at the Cycing Independent Reform Commission (CIRC).

But back to Pat. The most interesting thing McQuaid told the BBC was in fact this assertion: "I do agree that what he [Armstrong] did to the sport of cycling and how he treated people, as he admits himself, was something that he wouldn't repeat, wouldn't want to repeat if he had s second chance."

Funny that, because speaking to the BBC on the very same day, Armstrong actively admitted that doping was something that he would repeat, were he given the chance to turn back time.

"If I was racing in 2015, no I wouldn't [dope] again. I don't think you have to," Armstrong - towing the company line, said, before adding: "If you take me back to 1995 when it was completely and totally pervasive, I'd probably do it again. I look at everything when I made that decision, when my teammates, and the whole peloton made that decision. It was a bad decision in an imperfect time. but it happened."

Indeed, despite readily admitting that he was a "complete asshole" to "a dozen people for 15 years" in the wake of his record seven Tour titles, Armstrong said he would "want to change the man who did those things. Maybe not the decision but the way he acted."

Elsewhere, the BBC interview was the visual equivalent of eating a pick 'n mix during a particularly tiresome film in which the plot, although entirely predictable as an entity, was strangely compelling, primarily because of the crazed, sociopathic tendencies of its lead man (let's just say Armstrong's performance was something David Lynch would be proud of).

There was self-loathing mixed with self-back-slapping, and the whole gamut of smiles, frowns, scowls and contorted sneers, plus grimaces, smirks and dramatic pauses aplenty. At one point, there was even puppy dog eyes of the kind not seen since they inexplicably made the eighth installment of the Beethoven film franchise.

So while there was an apology from Armstrong for causing British Tour champions Bradley Wiggins and Chris Froome so much strife during their stints in yellow, Armstrong couldn't resist raising Froome's TUE controversy and depicting it as the latest world-verses-Lance conspiracy.

Looking tired and displaying a fair amount of neck-sag of the kind that gets Hollywood surgeons salivating, Armstrong showed that he really just doesn't get it by admitting that his comeback in 2009 was "one of the biggest mistakes of his life".

Really, Lance? Not the actual drugs and bullying? Of course not... Because it was the comeback that acted as "the bridge to the past". Without the comeback, "the view over the water is too far" and the empire wouldn't have come tumbling down.

Getting caught is what still sucks above all.

And judging by his propensity to reference himself in the third person, Armstrong is clearly trying to create some kind of Lance v2.0. What the endgame is remains unclear. There's talk that he sees his future in the peloton of politics. To most sane people in the world, that seems ludicrous - but if Arnold Schwarzenegger can get elected governor, perhaps it's not unfeasibly that Armstrong will one day be living up to his promises that he'll be back.

But anyone who can sincerely compare the vacant space left by the scrubbing of his seven titles to the Tour-less chasm that coincided with both World Wars is surely a man severely lacking in both judgement and compassion, and not a figure on the road to rehabilitation.

This is a man who, despite everything, still thought it acceptable to appear in a drug-themed music video for his former Rage Against The Machine bassist friend, Tim Commerford. The song deals with "the misplaced outrage over performance-enhancing drugs," according to Commerford, and features the lyric, "Meet me in the velodrome".

In his short cameo in the video, Armstrong, sporting a Mellow Johnny's jersey, leaves an expletive-laden voice message on the phone of a man who appears to be shooting up drugs. Future User's 'Mountain Lion' was apparently released with the hashtag #steroidsorheroin.

Yep, way to go Lance.

And it was at Mellow Johnny's, his bike store in Austin, where the BBC interview took place and where Armstrong continued his own latest rage against the machine.

"At this point in my life, I'm not out to protect anybody. I am only out to protect seven people and they all have the last name: Armstrong," he said, sitting underneath those framed seven maillot jaunes. Would you really vote for this man? Heck, would you even buy a bike from this man?