Lance Armstrong on 'Oprah': I used performance-enhancing drugs, 'bullied' detractors
Lance Armstrong confessed to using performance-enhancing drugs to win the Tour de France during an interview with Oprah Winfrey, reversing more than a decade of denial.
Lance Armstrong finally confessed his doping sins to talk show host Oprah Winfrey on Thursday but the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) has now challenged the disgraced cyclist to do the same under oath.
USADA, who exposed the seven-times Tour de France winner as a drug cheat, said in a statement that Armstrong's admission to a worldwide television audience was a good first step but that the 41-year-old needed to do more.
"Tonight, Lance Armstrong finally acknowledged that his cycling career was built on a powerful combination of doping and deceit," said USADA chief Travis Tygart in a statement released shortly after the gripping 90-minute interview.
"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."
Armstrong, who has been stripped of his seven Tour wins and a bronze medal from the 2000 Sydney Olympics, took Winfrey's quickfire, probing questions head on, owning up to the type of drug use that has tainted the sport he said he loves.
With cycling reeling from doping scandals and its place at the Olympics said to be under threat, Armstrong said he would do what he could, if called upon, to help rebuild its tattered image.
"I love cycling and I say that knowing that people see me as someone who disrespected the sport, the color yellow," Armstrong told Winfrey.
"If we can, and I stand on no moral platform here, if there was a truth and reconciliation commission, and I can't call for that, if they have it and I'm invited I'll be first man through the door."
The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) also called on Armstrong this week to reveal under oath what he knows about doping in cycling.
The 90-minute broadcast will be followed Friday with a second part on the Oprah Winfrey Network on Friday, the second installment of a 2½-hour interview taped on Monday.
The first interview
Armstrong opened the interview by saying “yes” to taking the banned energy boosting substance EPO, testosterone, HGH, cortisone and employing blood-doping practices and transfusions.
He said he started using in the “EPO generation” of the mid-1990s.
And he said that without using the performance-enhancing drugs, he would not have been able to win the seven Tour de France titles.
He also expressed regret at how he had “bullied” those who painted his success as fraudulent.
He sued his former masseuse, Emma O’Reilly, after she had revealed that he had wrongly backdated a prescription for banned cortisone after he tested positive for it in 1999.
“She’s one of those people I have to apologize to,” Armstrong said. “She got run over, got bullied. We sued so many people. I have reached out to her to make amends.”
Winfrey asked Armstrong why he has sued people when he knew they were telling the truth.
“It’s a major flaw,” he said. “A guy who wanted to control every outcome. To never forgive me, I understand that. I have started that process to speak to those people directly.”
Armstrong said he has reached out by telephone to Betsy Andreu, who said she and her husband Frankie, a former Armstrong teammate, first heard Armstrong admit to using testosterone and other performance-enhancing substances in a hospital room in 1996. They say he pressured Frankie Andreu to leave the U.S. Postal Service team after the 2000 Tour de France and negatively affected his career.
But Armstrong would not answer if the Andreus were telling the truth about what they say they had heard.
“I’m not going to take that one on,” Armstrong said. “I’m going to put that one down.”
Asked if his relationship with the Andreus is good, Armstrong said strongly, “No. They’ve been hurt too badly. A 40-minute conversation is not enough.”
"You called her crazy," Winfrey said.
“I did,” Armstrong said.
“This was a guy who used to be my friend, who decimated me," Andreu told CNN's Anderson Cooper on Thursday night. "He could have come clean. He owed it to me. He owes it to the sport that he destroyed."
Asked by Winfrey whether he was a bully, Armstrong said, “Yeah, yeah I am ... If I didn’t like what people said, I tried to control that.”
Winfrey noted the recent statement of USADA chief Travis Tygart that six samples taken from Armstrong after the 1999 Tour prologue came back in 2005 as positive for EPO, which wasn’t tested for in 1999.
“I didn’t fail a test,” Armstrong said. “I passed those others with nothing in my system.”
Early in the interview, Armstrong said his story of returning from cancer to dominate the Tour de France was “perfect for so long.”
“Overcoming the disease, winning the Tour, the happy marriage … it was mythic, the perfect story.
“It wasn’t true. I’m a flawed character....
“Now this story is so bad and so toxic.”
He told Winfrey he didn’t “invent the culture” of doping in cycling, “but I didn’t try to stop the culture, and I’m sorry for that.”
Lance Armstrong confessed to using performance-enhancing drugs to win the Tour de France during an interview with Oprah Winfrey, reversing more than a decade of denial.
Lance Armstrong finally confessed his doping sins to talk show host Oprah Winfrey on Thursday but the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) has now challenged the disgraced cyclist to do the same under oath.
USADA, who exposed the seven-times Tour de France winner as a drug cheat, said in a statement that Armstrong's admission to a worldwide television audience was a good first step but that the 41-year-old needed to do more.
"Tonight, Lance Armstrong finally acknowledged that his cycling career was built on a powerful combination of doping and deceit," said USADA chief Travis Tygart in a statement released shortly after the gripping 90-minute interview.
"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."
Armstrong, who has been stripped of his seven Tour wins and a bronze medal from the 2000 Sydney Olympics, took Winfrey's quickfire, probing questions head on, owning up to the type of drug use that has tainted the sport he said he loves.
With cycling reeling from doping scandals and its place at the Olympics said to be under threat, Armstrong said he would do what he could, if called upon, to help rebuild its tattered image.
"I love cycling and I say that knowing that people see me as someone who disrespected the sport, the color yellow," Armstrong told Winfrey.
"If we can, and I stand on no moral platform here, if there was a truth and reconciliation commission, and I can't call for that, if they have it and I'm invited I'll be first man through the door."
The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) also called on Armstrong this week to reveal under oath what he knows about doping in cycling.
The 90-minute broadcast will be followed Friday with a second part on the Oprah Winfrey Network on Friday, the second installment of a 2½-hour interview taped on Monday.
The first interview
Armstrong opened the interview by saying “yes” to taking the banned energy boosting substance EPO, testosterone, HGH, cortisone and employing blood-doping practices and transfusions.
He said he started using in the “EPO generation” of the mid-1990s.
And he said that without using the performance-enhancing drugs, he would not have been able to win the seven Tour de France titles.
He also expressed regret at how he had “bullied” those who painted his success as fraudulent.
He sued his former masseuse, Emma O’Reilly, after she had revealed that he had wrongly backdated a prescription for banned cortisone after he tested positive for it in 1999.
“She’s one of those people I have to apologize to,” Armstrong said. “She got run over, got bullied. We sued so many people. I have reached out to her to make amends.”
Winfrey asked Armstrong why he has sued people when he knew they were telling the truth.
“It’s a major flaw,” he said. “A guy who wanted to control every outcome. To never forgive me, I understand that. I have started that process to speak to those people directly.”
Armstrong said he has reached out by telephone to Betsy Andreu, who said she and her husband Frankie, a former Armstrong teammate, first heard Armstrong admit to using testosterone and other performance-enhancing substances in a hospital room in 1996. They say he pressured Frankie Andreu to leave the U.S. Postal Service team after the 2000 Tour de France and negatively affected his career.
But Armstrong would not answer if the Andreus were telling the truth about what they say they had heard.
“I’m not going to take that one on,” Armstrong said. “I’m going to put that one down.”
Asked if his relationship with the Andreus is good, Armstrong said strongly, “No. They’ve been hurt too badly. A 40-minute conversation is not enough.”
"You called her crazy," Winfrey said.
“I did,” Armstrong said.
“This was a guy who used to be my friend, who decimated me," Andreu told CNN's Anderson Cooper on Thursday night. "He could have come clean. He owed it to me. He owes it to the sport that he destroyed."
Asked by Winfrey whether he was a bully, Armstrong said, “Yeah, yeah I am ... If I didn’t like what people said, I tried to control that.”
Winfrey noted the recent statement of USADA chief Travis Tygart that six samples taken from Armstrong after the 1999 Tour prologue came back in 2005 as positive for EPO, which wasn’t tested for in 1999.
“I didn’t fail a test,” Armstrong said. “I passed those others with nothing in my system.”
Early in the interview, Armstrong said his story of returning from cancer to dominate the Tour de France was “perfect for so long.”
“Overcoming the disease, winning the Tour, the happy marriage … it was mythic, the perfect story.
“It wasn’t true. I’m a flawed character....
“Now this story is so bad and so toxic.”
He told Winfrey he didn’t “invent the culture” of doping in cycling, “but I didn’t try to stop the culture, and I’m sorry for that.”
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