Lance Armstrong considering drug confession, reports claim
Report claims Texan stripped of his Tour de France titles may admit to doping to help his charity and enable him to compete as athlete again
Disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong, who was stripped of his seven Tour de France titles for doping, is deciding whether to admit he used performance-enhancing drugs, The New York Times reported yesterday.
Armstrong has told associates and anti-doping officials he is considering admitting publicly that he used blood transfusions and banned drugs during his cycling career in an effort to restore his credibility so he can become a competitive athlete again, the newspaper reported.
The Times did not name its sources but cited "several people with direct knowledge of the situation".
The International Cycling Union (UCI) late last year effectively erased Armstrong from the cycling history books when it decided not to appeal against sanctions imposed on the American by the United States Anti-Doping Agency (Usada).
A damning report by Usada concluded that Armstrong helped orchestrate the most sophisticated doping programme in the history of sport.
The report included hundreds of pages of eyewitness testimony, e-mails, financial records and laboratory analysis of blood samples.