Lance Armstrong Confesses Doping in Oprah Interview

Sports | najia | January 15, 2013 at 9:13 pm

Lance Armstrong Confesses Doping in Oprah Interview: Former veteran cyclist Lance Armstrong has admitted to his faults like a brave man – the man who fought cancer, and later got stripped off his seven championship titles, accepted that the doping charges were true.

Lance Armstrong agreed that the charges against him were factual, while he was talking to Oprah Winfrey in a recent tete-a-tete. What Armstrong has done was quiet an unusual thing to do, and only someone like Oprah could squeeze so much courage out of him.

The former cycling champion has opened up after decades of denial. On the interview on Monday, Armstrong said that he had taken help of performance enhancing drugs in the Tour De France championship, which was one of his many major victories.

To avoid the media and paparazzi outside Armstrong’s house, the interview with Oprah was held at the Four Seasons Hotel in Austin. The interview lasted for almost 2.5 hours, and will later be edited into a 90 minute feature for the OWN television network. Oprah Winfrey had announced the much anticipated interview in a tweet – though the complete footage will be aired later, people already know the main juice of the interview.

This is a big step for Lance Armstrong, as it is the first public appearance and statement made by the cyclist after the unpleasant incident. Armstrong was stripped off all seven Tour De France titles after it was revealed that he took the banned performance enhancing drugs and blood doping substances.

The former cyclist said that he took the doping and performance enhancing substances in order to gain competitive advantage; he said that he did this before being diagnosed with cancer.

Lance Armstrong led one of the most spirited cancer campaigns ‘Livestrong’, when he was diagnosed with the deadly condition. He is in great health now, but regrets the loss of titles and a great cycling career.

It is still not clear whether Armstrong will be handing over the complete data about his doping incident, which includes names of people as well.