Lance Armstrong feels that the culture and mentality that pervaded cycling in his era still exists in the sport today, and that if there was an EPO equivalent then many riders would be taking it.
Speaking in an interview with Jeremy Whittle in the British newspaper The Times, published on Monday, Armstrong rejected the notion that he was the ringleader of doping in the sport, arguing that everyone was at it, and still would be today if similar drugs were available.
“I didn’t stand over my team-mates telling them to dope. That’s 100 per cent false," he said. "The sport fostered that culture. You had a substance, EPO, that was so efficient and if they have an equivalent tomorrow that is undetectable, everyone would be on it.”
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Armstrong was stripped of his seven Tour de France titles, won between 1999 and 2005, when the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) published its Reasoned Decision back in 2012. The Texan, who admitted his use of performance enhancing substances in each of his Tour victories during a televised confession on the Oprah Winfrey show, hit out at USADA for making him a scapegoat to fit a desired ‘narrative’.
“USADA had three or four key messages to pound home – ‘the most sophisticated doping programme in history, the greatest fraud in the history of sport, Armstrong forced young men to put dangerous substances in their body’ – all of which is untrue,” he said.
“In 2009, and 2010 [a brief comeback to cycling], I did nothing. I have said that under oath. If there is a reliable test that absolutely works and they say, ‘Lance, give us your samples,’ then 100 per cent I’d be in favour. But they don’t want to do that because if I’m proven clean in 2009 and 2010, it works against their narrative.”
— Cyclingnews.com (@Cyclingnewsfeed) December 7, 2015
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