Lance Armstrong came clean about illegal doping Thursday in part 1 of his interview with Oprah Winfrey, confessing to using EPO, testosterone, HGH and cortisone in addition to blood-doping and transfusions. The 41-year-old admitted that each of his 7 Tour de France victories was accomplished with performance enhancing drugs.
As for why he decided to confess after so many years of lying, Armstrong answered, “I don’t know that I have a great answer. I will start my answer by saying this is too late. It’s too late for probably most people. And that’s my fault. I view this situation as one big lie that I repeated a lot of times.”
“All the fault and all the blame here falls on me,” he continued. “But behind that picture and behind that story was momentum. And whether it’s fans or whether it’s the media it just gets going, and I lost myself in all that.”
Armstrong said his focus became protecting the hero image of himself that was created by him overcoming cancer and winning Tour de France titles. “You overcome the disease, you win the Tour de France seven times, you have a happy marriage, you have children. I mean it’s just this mythic perfect story, and it wasn’t true,” he said.
When asked what led to doping, Armstrong admitted that it was his “win at all costs” mentality. “It serves me well on the bike, served me well during the disease,” he explained. “But the level that it went to, for whatever reason, is a flaw. And then that defiance, that attitude, that arrogance. You cannot deny it. You saw it in the clip. Look at that arrogant prick. I say that today. It’s not good.”
Armstrong said he never felt guilty when he used performance enhancing substances, and he never felt like he was cheating. “I looked up the definition of cheat, and the definition is to gain an advantage on a rival or a foe. And I didn’t feel that way. I viewed it as a level playing field,” he told Winfrey.
He also maintained that he did not dope when he returned to cycling in 2009 and 2010. “The accusation and the alleged proof that they say that I doped after my comeback is not true,” Armstrong said. “The last time I crossed that line was 2005.”
When questioned about his teammates’ participation in doping, Armstrong refused to name names. “I don’t want to accuse anybody else, I don’t want to necessarily talk about anybody else,” he said. “I made my decisions. They are my mistake. And I am sitting here today to acknowledge that and say I’m sorry for that.”
He denied forcing anyone to dope. “The idea that anybody was forced or pressured or encouraged is not true,” said Armstrong.
Armstrong did own up to bullying anyone who exposed the truth about him. “Yeah I was a bully,” he said. “I was a bully in the sense that I tried to control the narrative. And if I didn’t like what somebody said, for whatever reasons in my own head, whether I viewed that as somebody being disloyal or friend turning on you or whatever, I tried to control that and said, ‘That’s a lie, they’re liars,'"
After part 1 of the interview aired, USADA chief Travis Tygart called on Armstrong to testify under oath. "Tonight, Lance Armstrong finally acknowledged that his cycling career was built on a powerful combination of doping and deceit," Tygart said in a statement. "His admission that he doped throughout his career is a small step in the right direction. But if he is sincere in his desire to correct his past mistakes, he will testify under oath about the full extent of his doping activities."
The second part of the interview airs tonight on Winfrey’s network, OWN.
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