Lance Armstrong: You need drugs to win Tour de France

 
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John Lichfield28 June 2013

Nobody can win the Tour de France without taking performance- enhancing drugs, Lance Armstrong, the disgraced seven-time winner of the race, claimed today.

In an interview with the French newspaper Le Monde on the eve of the 100th Tour, Armstrong implied that all recent winners of the race — which include Britain’s Sir Bradley Wiggins last year — must have taken some form of drugs.

“I didn’t invent doping. It didn’t stop with me either,” said the American.

In reply to the question whether it was possible to win races without doping while he was a professional rider, Armstrong said: “It depends which races you want to win. The Tour de France? Impossible to win it without dope. The Tour is a test of endurance where oxygen is the decisive factor.

“EPO, for example, is not going to help a sprinter over 100 metres but it will make all the difference to a 10,000 metre runner. That’s obvious.”

Although Armstrong was replying to questions about doping in professional cycling when he was a champion rider (1995-2005), his answers strongly implied he believed nothing had changed.

His comments will infuriate top riders who have succeeded him like Wiggins and this year’s Tour favourite, Chris Froome, who are adamant that they, and the sport, are now clean.

Asked how the doping habit in cycling could be broken, Armstrong said: “For many reasons, it will never finish, I didn’t invent doping. It didn’t stop with me either. I simply took part in a system which already existed. I am a human being. Doping has existed since Antiquity and will no doubt always exist. I know that’s not a popular thing to say but it is unfortunately the reality.”

Armstrong was exposed as a cheat by the United States Anti-Doping Agency last October but he only confessed to doping during a TV interview with Oprah Winfrey in January.

Following that interview, Wiggins branded Armstrong a “lying b*****d”, adding: “I don’t believe anything that comes out of his mouth any more.”

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