{"id":21674,"date":"2013-01-18T16:21:48","date_gmt":"2013-01-18T15:21:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/uk.news.yahoo.com\/lance-armstrong-admits-doping-oprah-interview-022310685.html"},"modified":"2013-01-18T16:21:48","modified_gmt":"2013-01-18T15:21:48","slug":"armstrong-admits-doping-in-oprah-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/armstrong-admits-doping-in-oprah-interview\/","title":{"rendered":"Lance Armstrong tells Oprah: I did take drugs"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong has admitted he took performance-enhancing drugs and used blood transfusions as he won his seven Tour de France titles.<\/p>\n

In an interview with Oprah Winfrey, the 41-year-old said it was “not possible” to win the the gruelling race so many times without doping.<\/p>\n

Armstrong confessed that he doped during all seven Tour victories from 1999 to 2005, using blood-boosting agent EPO; blood doping; testosterone, cortisone or human growth hormone.<\/p>\n

“My cocktail was EPO, transfusions and testosterone,” he said.<\/p>\n

“I made my decisions. They’re my mistake. And I’m sitting here today to acknowledge that and to say I’m sorry for that,”<\/p>\n

The Texan, who won the world road race title in 1993, added that his drug use began in the “mid-90s”.<\/p>\n

“I suppose earlier in my career there was cortisone and then the EPO generation began,” he said.<\/p>\n

However, he said at the time he did not believe what he was doing was cheating.<\/p>\n

“I looked up the definition of cheat. The definition of cheat is to gain an advantage over a rival or foe,” Armstrong said. “I didn’t do that. I viewed it as a level playing field.”<\/p>\n

Armstrong, who has already had his Tour wins taken away and been banned from the sport for life, acknowledged his admission was probably “too late” for most people.<\/p>\n

“I view this situation as one big lie, that I repeated a lot of times. It wasn’t as if I just said no.”<\/p>\n

He had repeatedly previously denied all accusations made against him, despite the United States Anti-Doping Agency found him to be a central figure in “the most sophisticated, professionalised and successful doping programme that sport has ever seen”.<\/p>\n

Although Armstrong acknowledged the doping, he rejected some of USADA’s claims about his US Postal team, saying: “It was definitely professional and it was definitely smart, if you can call it that. But it was very conservative, very risk averse.”<\/p>\n

“But to say that that programme was bigger than the East German programme in the mid-80s, it’s not true.”<\/p>\n

Although he denied forcing others on the team to take banned substances, he said he led by example and admitted being a “bully”.<\/p>\n

Armstrong was adamant he did not dope or perform blood transfusions in 2009 or 2010, when he made his comeback to the sport, saying: “The last time I crossed that line was 2005.”<\/p>\n

He said that allegations he did take banned substances during this comeback period were the only thing in the USADA’s detailed report that “really upset” him.<\/p>\n

It was out-of-competition testing and the so-called biological passport, which collates biological markers of doping and doping tests, that forced him to stop.<\/p>\n

The interview was recorded in Armstrong’s hometown of Austin, Texas, three days before it was broadcast.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong has admitted he took performance-enhancing drugs and used blood transfusions as he won his seven Tour de France titles.
\nIn an interview with Oprah Winfrey, the 41-year-old said it was “not possible” to win the the gru…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1213,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-21674","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1213"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21674"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21674\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}