Armstrong ‘lied to Oprah’
LANCE ARMSTRONG lied to Oprah Winfrey when he said he didn’t cheat in the 2009 and 2010 Tour de France races, claimed US Anti-Doping Agency boss Travis Tygart yesterday.
Tygart, whose USADA organisation unmasked Armstrong as the head of the most sophisticated drug doping programme in sports history, went on the attack against the disgraced cyclist in a 60 Minutes television interview to be broadcast in the United States tomorrow.
He said Armstrong had not yet told the the full truth about his doping and had lied several times on significant issues in his vaunted confessional with Winfrey.
One of the lies, Tygart claimed, was telling Winfrey he did not dope for his 2009-2010 return to the Tour. Tygart said blood tests solidly refute that claim.
In a letter to Armstrong, Tygart says he offered him a deadline of February 6 to co-operate fully and truthfully in exchange for a possible lessening of his lifetime ban from sports.
Tygart, whose damning report last year led to the imposition of the ban and the stripping of Armstrong’s seven Tour de France wins, said it was not true that the former cyclist tried a clean comeback, as he told Winfrey.
‘‘[It’s] Just contrary to
the
evi- dence . . . his blood tests in 2009, 2010 [ show] one to a million chance that it was due to something other than doping,’’ he tells 60 Minutes.
Tygart says there is further evidence in emails between Armstrong and Dr Michele Ferrari in those years.
Armstrong lied about his last two Tours de France because under the statute of limitations for criminal fraud, he would still be open to prosecution for fraud, Tygart said.
He also wasn’t telling the truth when he said he used only small amounts of the blood booster 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.’’
Armstrong also denied to Winfrey that he offered USADA a donation of about $ US250,000, which Tygart had previously revealed on a 60 Minutes show. Tygart said he took the call himself from an Armstrong lieutenant.
He scorns Armstrong’s denial he intimidated his team’s riders into doping. Tygart tells 60 Minutes he heard from several of Armstrong’s former team- mates that Armstrong, as part team owner and its head, monitored their blood chemistry and made it clear that doping was a mandatory part of the programme.
‘‘He was the boss,’’ says Tygart. ‘‘The evidence is clear he was one of the ringleaders of this conspiracy that pulled off this grand heist that defrauded using tens of millions of taxpayer dollars, defrauded millions of sports fans and his fellow competitors.’’
Tygart said the part of the Winfrey interview that he found most unsettling was when Armstrong said he had looked up ‘‘cheater’’ in the dictionary and didn’t think it necessarily applied to him.
‘‘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,’’ says Tygart. ‘‘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.’’