Lance Armstrong said he wouldn’t have changed a thing about his consistent doping that led to what he called “the biggest meltdown in the history of sports.”
The former cycling great — who was stripped of his seven Tour de France titles by the International Cycling Union in 2012 for doping — gave a lengthy interview for a special called “Lance Armstrong: Next Stage” that airs May 29 on NBC Sports Network after Game 2 of the Stanley Cup Final.
“We did what we had to do to win. It wasn’t legal, but I wouldn’t change a thing — whether it’s losing a bunch of money, going from hero to zero,” Armstrong said on the 30-minute special. “I wouldn’t change the way I acted. I mean I would, but this is a longer answer.
“Primarily, I wouldn’t change the lessons that I’ve learned. I don’t learn all the lessons if I don’t act that way. I don’t get investigated and sanctioned if I don’t act the way I acted. If I just doped and didn’t say a thing, none of that would have happened. None of it. I was begging for, I was asking for them to come after me. It was an easy target.”
Armstrong vehemently denied doping allegations for years, lying throughout his career until finally admitting the truth to Oprah Winfrey in January 2013. He got sued by the federal government and fellow cyclist Floyd Landis in a whistleblower lawsuit that sought over $100 million.
The government argued that Armstrong defrauded the government by knowingly taking performance-enhancing drugs while accepting millions from the US Postal Service, which sponsored his cycling team. He paid the government $5 million last year to settle.
During parts of the interview that haven’t been made public yet, he goes on to show remorse. He says he’s apologized to many of the directly-impacted parties he hurt the most, but also regrets the fact that he’ll never get to apologize to the public at large that he let down.
“I think the most important is… the bulk of society that I’ll never be able to apologize to across the table or over the phone,” said Armstrong. “There’s so many people that want that. But they’ll never sit on a plane next to me, they’ll never show up at the front door.”
When asked if he’d go back and change his decisions, Armstrong passive-aggressively blamed the doping culture present in the cycling community for his mistakes.
“It’s a tough question, and it’s an answer that people don’t like,” Armstrong said. “I wouldn’t change a thing, because I’m sitting here today. So I wouldn’t change that. It was a mistake. It led to a lot of other mistakes, led to the most colossal meltdown in the history of sports. Think of that. But I learned a lot. What I wish would’ve happened, I wish kids from Plano, kids from Glenwood Springs, Colorado, and Brooklyn and Montana as young Americans, if we’d gone to Europe and everyone’s fighting with their fists, we still win, I promise you that. So that’s what I wish would’ve happened. But it didn’t. And I made a bunch of mistakes, and it got me to this place where I am now, and I don’t want to trade with anybody.
“I knew there were going to be knives at this fight, not just fists. I knew there would be knives. I had knives, and then one day, people start showing up with guns. That’s when you say, do I either fly back to Plano, Texas, and not know what you’re going to do? Or do you walk to the gun store? I walked to the gun store. I didn’t want to go home.
“I don’t want to make excuses for myself that everybody did it or we never could have won without it. Those are all true, but the buck stops with me. I’m the one who made the decision to do what I did. I didn’t want to go home, man. I was going to stay.”
