Summary
18 January 2013
Lance Armstrong, the former cycling champion, has admitted to using drugs to improve his performance for the first time. In an interview with Oprah Winfrey on her OWN Network, Armstrong said he had used drugs during all seven of his Tour de France wins, from 1999 to 2005.
Reporter:
Ben Wright
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Report
The confession took a long time to come. Despite being stripped of his Tour de France titles last year following a doping investigation, Lance Armstrong always denied cheating.
But he had been lying. The 41-year-old American cyclist told Oprah Winfrey he used performance enhancing drugs in every Tour de France contest he won.
He took banned substances and used blood transfusions to boost his performance. Without them, he said, it wouldn't have been possible to win.
Armstrong said he kept repeating "one big lie" and conceded that his admission would be "too late" for most people. "All the fault and all the blame lies with me," Lance Armstrong said.
But he claimed his actions had not felt like cheating at the time and denied having pressurised other members of his team to dope.
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Vocabulary
- confession
admission of guilt
- stripped of
had taken away
- doping
using drugs in sport
- performance enhancing drugs
substances used illegally to improve a sportsperson's ability
- blood transfusions
adding blood to a person's body
- conceded
accepted as true
- admission
acceptance of the truth
- blame
responsibility for a bad or wrong act
- cheating
winning by dishonest means
- pressurised
strongly tried to influence
