“I made my decisions. They’re my mistake,” Armstrong told US talk show host Oprah Winfrey, in his first interview since he was banned from the sport for life and stripped of his record yellow jersey haul late last year.
During the interview, Armstrong, 41, came clean about his use of performance enhancing drugs, after a decade of denials.
“And I’m sitting here today to acknowledge that and to say I’m sorry for that,” he said. “I view this situation as one big lie that I repeated a lot of times.”
Armstrong said he didn’t think of himself as a cheat.
“The definition is to gain an advantage on a rival or foe,” he said, after using a dictionary to look up the definition of “cheating”. “I didn’t view it that way.”
Armstrong admitted to using the blood-booster EPO, blood-doping transfusions, testosterone and human growth hormone.
US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) chief executive Travis Tygart called the admission a small step in the right direction.
“Tonight, Lance Armstrong finally acknowledged that his cycling career was built on a powerful combination of doping and deceit,” Tygart, who guided the USADA probe that led to Armstrong being stripped of his record seven Tour de France titles and banned from the sport, said.
Livestrong, the cancer charity Armstrong founded, said it was “disappointed” that he had misled it and many others about doping.
“We at the Livestrong Foundation are disappointed by the news that Lance Armstrong misled people during and after his cycling career, including us,” it said.
Prior to recording the interview on Monday, Armstrong went to Livestrong headquarters to apologise to its staff – and in the interview, he wore its iconic yellow rubber wristband.
“We accepted his apology in order to move on and chart a strong, independent course,” the charity said in its statement, received 40 minutes after the conclusion of the first part of the broadcast that continues tonight.
Armstrong, who was stripped of the Olympic bronze medal he picked up in Sydney in 2000 hours before the airing of the interview, denied forcing teammates to dope, but admitted that they may have felt pressure to follow his example.
Image via Getty
