Lance Armstrong doping confession fails to satisfy critics

The formerly defiant Lance Armstrong once said, "As long as I live, I will deny ever doping," but sitting face to face with Oprah Winfrey in an interview broadcast on Thursday, he reversed course.

He lost his icy stare and buried his cutting words. Looking nervous, Armstrong admitted that for most of his cycling career he used a cocktail of drugs, including testosterone, cortisone, human growth hormone and the blood booster EPO.

But Armstrong, 41, called his doping regimen "simple and conservative", rejecting volumes of evidence by the US Anti-Doping Agency (Usada) that the drug programme on his Tour de France-winning teams was "the most sophisticated, organised and professionalised" in the history of cycling.

He justified his actions in the years he won the Tour from 1999 to 2005 on the grounds that doping was then part of the culture of the sport. He did not see it as cheating: "I viewed it as a level playing field."

Armstrong said: "There will be people who hear this and never forgive me. I understand that."

Travis Tygart, Usada's chief executive, called Armstrong's admission "a step in the right direction", but John Fahey, president of the World Anti-Doping Agency, branded it a controlled PR stunt that revealed nothing new. He said Armstrong's assertion that he was not cheating "gives him no credibility".