Lance Armstrong came clean to Oprah Winfrey about his use of blood doping products during the seven straight years he won the Tour de France, but U.S. Anti-Doping Agency CEO Travis Tygart tells CBS "60 Minutes" that he didn’t’ tell the full truth.
Tygart says that Armstrong did dope upon his return to cycling in 2009, and he was a heavy user of EPO, not a small one, as he claimed to Oprah. He also said he wrote a letter to Armstrong, saying he has a deadline of Feb. 6 to cooperate fully to USADA's investigation in exchange for possibly reducing the length of his lifetime ban from sports. An attorney for Armstrong told USADA that the cyclist cannot accommodate the Feb. 6 deadline, but the cyclist will cooperate with efforts to "clean up cycling." It's just that they believe the sport's governing body and world anti-doping officials should take the lead in the cleanup.
Here’s a sampling of comments from Tygart's interview with the news magazine show, which will air this Sunday at 7 p.m. ET.
Tygart on Armstrong’s clean claims in his return to cycling:
"Just contrary to the evidence. ... His blood tests in 2009, 2010—expert reports based on the variation of his blood values—from those tests, one to a million chance that it was due to something other than doping."
On Armstrong’s use of EPO:
"He used a lot of EPO. You look at the '99 Tour de France samples and they were flaming positive, the highest that we've ever seen. And he's now acknowledged those were positive."
On Armstrong’s claims that what he was doing wasn’t cheating:
"It's amazing ... you could go to almost any kindergarten in this country or frankly around the world and find kids playing tag or four square and ask them what cheating is. Every one of them will tell you it's breaking the rules of the game. No real athlete has to look up the definition of cheating. And it's offensive to clean athletes who are out there working hard to play by the rules that apply to their sport."
On Armstrong’s notion that the doping he was doing was nothing special:
"It’s simply not true. The access they had to inside information, to how the tests work, what tests went in place at what time, special access to the laboratory. He was on an entirely different playing field than all the other athletes, even if you assume all the other athletes had some access to doping products."
The entire "60 Minutes" interview with Tygart will air Sunday night at 7 p.m. ET.
Meanwhile, Tygart isn’t the only one who doesn’t believe that Armstrong's clean claims upon his return to the sport in 2009. Bradley Wiggins, the 2012 Tour de France champion who finished fourth in the ’09 event that Armstrong finished third in, bases his suspicions on observations he made while racing alongside the American in key mountain stages.
"I can still remember going toe to toe with him, watching the man I saw on the top of Verbier in 2009 to the man I saw on the top of Ventoux a week later when we were in doping control together," said Wiggins, speaking at a Team Sky training camp in Mallorca.
"It wasn't the same bike rider. You only have to watch the videos of how the guy was riding. I don't believe anything that comes out of his mouth anymore."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.Just wondering :
You didn't hear about the 10mil book deal he has going? You would come out singing too. It's all about the money. It's done let's do a better job of testing so it doesn't happen again or just move on then.
I wonder how much Oprah paid him.
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