Lance Armstrong doping confession: "I'm a flawed character"

PanARMENIAN.Net - Former professional cyclist Lance Armstrong told the world Thursday, January 17 evening that he used performance-enhancing drugs to win seven Tour de France titles, The Wall Street Journal reported.

In an interview with Oprah Winfrey, Mr. Armstrong said that like many other cyclists of his generation, he used EPO, human-growth hormone, testosterone and other drugs to compete. "I'm a flawed character," Mr. Armstrong said during the hour-and-a-half program. "I viewed this situation as one big lie that I repeated a lot of times."

The taped show, which was broadcast on the Oprah Winfrey Network and on the Internet, marked the end of a dozen years of strident denials from the 41-year-old Mr. Armstrong, who faced several doping scandals during his career but had, until last summer, escaped punishment from antidoping authorities.

Looking tentative and anxious at times, Mr. Armstrong, who wore a blue sport coat and a lavender button-down shirt, said doping was so prevalent in professional cycling from the early 1990s to 2005, that saying they needed to take banned substances was like "saying we have to have air in our tires and we have to have water in our bottles."

Mr. Armstrong admitted, without hesitation and at the top of the 90-minute show, to his own use of drugs and blood transfusions, but shied away from significant details and didn't provide specifics about the involvement of riders, team managers and doctors in his team's doping program.

Mr. Armstrong's decision to come clean follows a saga that began in May, 2010, when he was accused of doping by his former teammate, Floyd Landis.