Finally, A Confession: Lance Armstrong Comes Clean

By Amy Wagner on January 21, 2013

In a shocking two-part interview with Oprah Winfrey that aired on Thursday and Friday, cycling legend Lance Armstrong publicly confessed to using performance-enhancing drugs and blood transfusions for the first time. After earning international fame for winning the Tour de France seven times, as well as truly beating the odds by surviving cancer, Armstrong is now being talked about for a very different reason. It has now come to light that he cheated through the use of drugs for many years, and blatantly lied under oath about such practices. Many, including Armstrong himself, have observed that no one in cycling attempted to stop him from doing this. A number of his former friends and teammates attribute this to his bullying actions and the fact that he went so far as to coerce fellow cyclists into taking the same cheating measures that he did.

Photo courtesy of Gawker.com

Although Armstrong confesses that he would not have been able to win the seven Tour de France titles without cheating, he insists that one of the reasons for using performance-enhancing drugs involved the culture of cycling during his peak era. It is worth noting that the United States Anti-Doping Agency has revealed that 20 of the 21 athletes on the Tour de France podium from 1999 to 2005, the years Armstrong won, have been ”directly tied to likely doping through admissions, sanctions, [and] public investigations.” So while he is far from the lone ranger in terms of cheating, the lengths he went to in order to conceal his actions are truly astounding, including numerous public denials. He even went so far as to sue the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency in hopes of getting them to drop doping charges.

In the interview with Winfrey, Armstrong says that the peak of his disgrace happened when his well-known cancer charity Livestrong asked him to step down from his position as chairman. Personally, I remember beginning to look up to Armstrong at some point during middle school, when everyone began sporting the iconic yellow Livestrong bracelet. After learning about how this man had not only defeated cancer and then went on to win one of the world’s most prestigious competitions not merely once, but seven times, I was inspired. In October, when he was stripped of his seven Tour de France titles in addition to receiving a lifetime ban, I remember that I still did not want to believe that he had cheated. It is truly sad when one of the world’s most inspirational people has a legacy that is shrouded in countless lies. As it turns out, the man who had seemingly achieved the impossible found the impossible to be far too daunting.

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