Interesting "apology" for Lance... http://sports.nationalpost.com/2012/10/23/the-apology-lance-armstrong-will-never-give/ The apology Lance Armstrong will never give Hello, everybody, and thanks for coming today. I know a lot of you never thought I would do this. Well, I never thought I would do this, either. My name is Lance Armstrong, and I love cycling. When I was young my anger and desire would overwhelm me when I competed, a blinding rage, and I could barely control it. I had a rough childhood, and cycling was my escape. I was a triathlon champion as a teenager, and I was the world road race champion at 21, and I came to Europe and watched Miguel Indurain pedal away from me like I was a kid. That was the 1994 Tour de France. He kicked my ass. Then everybody started to kick my ass. EPO came in, and guys were so much stronger, so much faster. I could win one-day races, but I wasn’t the greatest climber, and I had to withdraw in three of my first four attempts at the Tour; the other time, I finished 36th. I wanted to be great, so I faced the same decision every other cyclist in the last 15 years faced: you dope, or you get dropped. That was the choice. It’s like my former friend Levi Leipheimer put it: this sport breaks your heart, bit by bit. Well, I don’t regret my decision the way those other guys did. I needed to be the best, and you couldn’t be the best and be clean in this sport. So I doped. And after I beat cancer I needed cycling more than ever, so I kept going. I doped better than anybody — I got better information, I got the best doctors, I pushed the envelope even though EPO killed a bunch of pro cyclists in the 1980s and 1990s. There was no other way. I built a machine to take on pro cycling, and I destroyed fields full of guys who were as dirty as I was. I don’t apologize for that. I’m sorry I had to dope to be great, but this problem didn’t start with me, and didn’t end with me. So while I accept my lifetime ban, I call on the UCI and WADA and the USADA to agree to a one-time truth and reconciliation commission, to allow other riders to tell the truth without fear of repercussions. The sport created us; the sport needs to let us talk about it. That being said, there are some things I’m sorry for. I’m sorry I ran Christophe Bassons, one of the sport’s truly noble men, out of the Tour in 1999 for daring to say that you couldn’t reach a top 10 at the Tour without doping. I’m sorry for attacking Frankie and Betsy Andreu for being in the hospital room with me in 1996 when I admitted to the doctors that I had used EPO, testosterone, growth hormone, cortisone and steroids. I’m sorry I sued our former soigneur, Emma O’Reilly, who wouldn’t back down from the truth. I’m sorry I called her a prostitute, and a drunk. I’m sorry for attacking journalists like David Walsh and Paul Kimmage, who is still being sued by the UCI in what is as unconscionable a lawsuit as even I’ve ever seen. I’m sorry I told Christian Vande Velde to dope or get dropped from the team, and I’m sorry I allowed David Zabriskie to dope, because he got into cycling to escape his drug-addict father, the way I used it to pedal away from my absent father and my abusive stepfather and the emptiness of Plano, Texas. I’m sorry David broke down and cried the night he agreed to go against everything he believed in. I’m sorry for sending a text message to Levi Leipheimer’s wife Odessa after I found out he was testifying that said, “Run, don’t walk.” I’m sorry I threatened to blackmail Greg LeMond. I’m sorry for painting Floyd Landis as an unbalanced lunatic, and for telling Tyler Hamilton in an Aspen restaurant that I would make his life a living hell. I’m sorry that the International Cycling Union is so warped that its president, Pat McQuaid, called Landis and Hamilton “scumbags” on Monday. I’m sorry he was following my lead. I’m sorry I lied so many times, and that I used cancer as a shield, and to make money. I’m sorry I said stuff like, “The people who don’t believe in cycling, the cynics, the skeptics, I feel sorry for you. I’m sorry you can’t dream big and I’m sorry you don’t believe in miracles.” I’m sorry I hurt so many people through litigation, by bullying, by using my money and my prominence in cycling and my political connections to destroy their careers. But all of this was the cover-up, not the crime, and I felt like I needed to do it to protect myself, and to protect what I was trying to do. The rage and desire consumed me again. I’m not sorry about Livestrong, because even if it doesn’t fund cancer research it provides hope, because I provide hope. Some people might say it diverts money away from the science of curing cancer, but I’m not sorry that those yellow bracelets became totems to a lot of people. It’s like a guy named Michael Farber wrote in Sports Illustrated: he had been diagnosed with cancer, and while he was waiting in an oncologist’s office another guy took the bracelet off his wrist and handed it to him, and said, “Here.” And it gave that man hope, and hope matters. He’s in remission. I’ll never apologize for giving people hope. And this is going to cost me millions, personally, but the rest of my life is about one thing now; about continuing as a symbol of hope for people with cancer. That’s why I’m coming clean today, to protect that. Because goddamnit, yeah, I doped. But I suffered on that bike, did anything I could on that bike, emptied myself on that bike. I pumped my veins full of whatever it took to win, no matter what it did to me, no matter what it cost. Does that sound familiar? Does it sound like anything else to you? Cycling was a lot like cancer to me. I faced overwhelming odds, and I beat them the only way I could. So I hope there’s a way for people to still look at me and feel their hearts lift a little, feel lightened, feel like anything is possible. After everything, that’s still important. After everything, that’s what I have left.
Source: Disgraced cyclist Armstrong says he's 'sorry' to Livestrong staff http://ca.news.yahoo.com/lance-arms...oprah-interview-few-miles-143207476--spt.html Excerpts: AUSTIN, Texas - Lance Armstrong apologized to the staff at his Livestrong cancer foundation before heading to an interview with Oprah Winfrey, a person with direct knowledge of the meeting told The Associated Press. ...The cyclist will make a limited confession to Winfrey about his role as the head of a long-running scheme to dominate the Tour with the aid of performance-enhancing drugs, a person with knowledge of the situation has told the AP. ...In a text to the AP on Saturday, Armstrong said: "I told her (Winfrey) to go wherever she wants and I'll answer the questions directly, honestly and candidly. That's all I can say." ...Former teammate Floyd Landis, who was stripped of the 2006 Tour de France title for doping, has filed a federal whistle-blower lawsuit that accused Armstrong of defrauding the U.S. Postal Service. The Justice Department has yet to decide whether it will join the suit as a plaintiff. The London-based Sunday Times also is suing Armstrong to recover about $500,000 it paid him to settle a libel lawsuit. On Sunday, the newspaper took out a full-page ad in the Chicago Tribune, offering Winfrey suggestions for what questions to ask Armstrong. Dallas-based SCA Promotions, which tried to deny Armstrong a promised bonus for a Tour de France win, has threatened to bring yet another lawsuit seeking to recover more than $7.5 million an arbitration panel awarded the cyclist in that dispute. The lawsuit most likely to be influenced by a confession might be the Sunday Times case. Potential perjury charges stemming from Armstrong's sworn testimony in the 2005 arbitration fight would not apply because of the statute of limitations. Armstrong was not deposed during the federal investigation that was closed last year. Many of his sponsors dropped Armstrong after the damning USADA report — at the cost of tens of millions of dollars — and soon after, he left the board of Livestrong, which he founded in 1997. Armstrong is still said to be worth about $100 million.
This headline "Cycling could be dropped from the Olympics if Lance Armstrong implicates the sport's governing body in a cover-up, says International Olympic Committee member **** Pound. " http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/cycling/21034694
There are many who swear by such people... I guess it all depends which side of the argument you're on, doesn't it?
Lance's interview with Oprah: Wow, as I had expected, not only did he not show any remorse or contrition for his years of lies, cheating, bullying and suing those who told the truth, he also revealed how a deeply flawed athlete he is ... one without a moral compass and a complete disregard to the rules of sports. An arrogant, manipulative, sociopathic, egomaniacal pr*ck. He should have just stayed back in his cave instead of confirming his true character to the world. He was more embarrased and sorry at being caught doping than being sorry for doping.
Still forever unrepentant... http://m.usatoday.com/article/news/2471413 Lance Armstrong: 'Impossible' to win Tour de France without doping PORTO VECCHIO, Corsica (AP) - The dirty past of the Tour de France came back Friday to haunt the 100th edition of cycling's showcase race, with Lance Armstrong telling a newspaper he couldn't have won without doping. Armstrong's interview with Le Monde was surprising on many levels, not least because of his long-antagonistic relationship with the respected French daily that first reported in 1999 that corticosteroids were found in the American's urine as he was riding his way to the first of his seven Tour wins. In response, Armstrong had complained that he was being persecuted by "vulture journalism, desperate journalism." Now seemingly prepared to let bygones be bygones, Armstrong told Le Monde that he still considers himself the record-holder for Tour victories, even though all seven of his titles were stripped from him last year for doping. He also said his life has been ruined by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency investigation that exposed as lies his years of denials that he and his teammates doped. The interview was the latest blast from cycling's doping-tainted recent history to rain on the Tour's 100th race. Previously, Armstrong's former rival on French roads, 1997 Tour winner Jan Ullrich, confessed to blood-doping for the first time with a Spanish doctor. French media also reported that a Senate investigation into the effectiveness of anti-doping controls pieced together evidence of drug use at the 1998 Tour by Laurent Jalabert, a former star of the race now turned broadcaster. Not surprising in Armstrong's interview was his claim that it was "impossible" to win the Tour without doping when he was racing. Armstrong already told U.S. television talk-show host Oprah Winfrey when he finally confessed this January that doping was just "part of the job" of being a pro-cyclist. The banned hormone erythropoietin, or EPO, wasn't detectable by cycling's doping controls until 2001 and so was widely abused because it prompts the body to produce oxygen-carrying blood cells, giving a big performance boost to endurance athletes. Armstrong was clearly talking about his own era, rather than the Tour today. Le Monde reported that he was responding to the question: "When you raced, was it possible to perform without doping?" "That depends on which races you wanted to win. The Tour de France? No. Impossible to win without doping. Because the Tour is a test of endurance where oxygen is decisive," Le Monde quoted Armstrong as saying. It published the interview in French. Some subsequent media reports about Le Monde's interview concluded that Armstrong was saying doping is still necessary now, rather than when he was winning the Tour from 1999-2005. That suggestion provoked dismay from current riders, race organizers and the sport's governing body, the International Cycling Union or UCI. "If he's saying things like he doesn't think that it's possible to win the Tour clean, then he should be quiet - because it is possible," said American rider Tejay van Garderen of the BMC team. UCI President Pat McQuaid called the timing of Armstrong's comments "very sad." "I can tell him categorically that he is wrong. His comments do absolutely nothing to help cycling," McQuaid said in a statement. "The culture within cycling has changed since the Armstrong era and it is now possible to race and win clean." "Riders and teams owners have been forthright in saying that it is possible to win clean - and I agree with them." Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
