Armstrong: I started doping at 21
Disgraced cycling star Lance Armstrong says he started doping at the age of 21 during his first season as a professional.
The American makes the revelation in an ESPN documentary Lance which is set to follow Michael Jordan’s The
Last Dance on the United States broadcaster’s list of hits.
A 90 seconds teaser has been released showing Armstrong, a seventime Tour de France champion who was stripped of those titles and banned for life in 2012 amidst a doping scandal, questioned by US journalist Marina Zenovich.
‘‘Wow, straight to the point, probably 21,’’ Armstrong replied when asked how old he was when he first doped.
Armstrong, 48, said there were ‘‘a bunch of ways to define doping’’.
‘‘The easiest way to define it is breaking the rules. Were we getting injections of vitamins and other things like that at an earlier age? Yes, but they weren’t illegal. I always asked [what I was being given]. I always knew, and I always made the decision on my own,’’ he said.
‘‘Nobody said, ‘don’t ask, this is what you’re getting’. I never, ever would have gone for that. I educated myself on what was being given, and I chose to do it.’’
In the teaser for the two-part documentary to be aired by ESPN on May 24 and 31, Armstrong also suggests doping may have caused his testicular cancer.
‘‘You know, I don’t know the answer to that. I don’t want to say no, because I don’t think that’s right either. I don’t know if it’s yes or no, but I certainly wouldn’t say no,’’ Armstrong said.
‘‘The only thing I will tell you is, the only time in my life that I ever did growth hormone was the 1996 season.
‘‘And so just in my head, I’m like, growth . . . growing hormones and cells, like . . . if anything good needs to be grown, it does. But wouldn’t it also make sense that if anything bad is there, that it too would grow?’’