Lance Armstrong admits doping in Oprah Winfrey show
19/01/2013
Lance Armstrong has admitted for the first time that he doped to win all seven of his Tour de France titles, turning his back on years of denials and confessing that his storied career at the top of competitive cycling was fuelled by drugs, lies and bullying. In a television interview with Oprah Winfrey broadcast on Thursday night, Armstrong said it would not have been possible to win the titles without cheating, such was the prevalence of performance-enhancing drugs in the sport at the time. He mused that he might not have been caught if not for his comeback in 2009. And he was certain his "fate was sealed" when longtime friend, training partner and trusted lieutenant George Hincapie, who was along for the ride on all seven of Armstrong's Tour de France wins from 1999-2005, was forced to give him up to anti-doping authorities. He dodged few questions and refused to implicate anyone else, even as he said it was humanly impossible to win seven straight Tours without doping. Armstrong said he started doping in mid-1990s but didn't when he finished third in his comeback attempt. Testimony from nearly a dozen former team-mates led to stripping Armstrong of his Tour titles. Shortly after, he lost nearly all his endorsements, was forced to walk away from the Livestrong cancer charity he founded in 1997, and just this week was stripped of his bronze medal from the 2000 Olympics. What he called "my cocktail" contained the steroid testosterone and the blood-booster erythropoietein, or EPO, "but not a lot," Armstrong said. That was on top of blood-doping, which involved removing his own blood and weeks later re-injecting it into his system. All of it was designed to build strength and endurance, but it became so routine that Armstrong described it as "like saying we have to have air in our tires or water in our bottles." "That was, in my view, part of the job," he said. He denied threatening to expel those who refused to cheat but conceded the "level of expectation, of pressure" could have compelled some riders to do so. He said he "lost himself" in the fairytale narrative of an athlete who battled back from testicular cancer to triumph in cycling's most gruelling race, raise a beautiful family and launch a cancer charity, Livestrong. "The truth isn't what I said. And now it's gone ... this story was so perfect for so long." At times slipping into the second person, he said: "You won the disease ... it was this mythic perfect story. And it just wasn't true." He said his comeback was a tactical mistake that galvanised investigations which eventually unravelled his deception. "We wouldn't be sitting here if I didn't come back."
Earlier in October 2012, ,the US Anti-Doping Agency claimed, Armstrong was at the heart of "the most sophisticated, professionalised and successful doping programme that sport has ever seen". The main charges against Lance Armstrong included:
Use and/or attempted use of prohibited substances and/or methods including EPO [erythropoietin], blood transfusions, testosterone, corticosteroids and/or masking agents.
Possession of prohibited substances and/or methods including EPO, blood transfusions and related equipment (such as needles, blood bags, storage containers and other transfusion equipment and blood parameters measuring devices), testosterone, corticosteroids and/or masking agents.
Trafficking of EPO, testosterone, and/or corticosteroids.
Administration and/or attempted administration to others of EPO, testosterone and/or cortisone.
Assisting, encouraging, aiding, abetting, covering up and other complicity involving one or more anti-doping rule violations and/or attempted anti-doping rule violations.