Lance Armstrong Admits Winning Tour De France "Impossible" Without Doping

Lance Armstrong admits he doesn’t think he could have won all the Tour de France events he did without doping.

In an interview with the French daily newspaper Le Monde, Armstrong, however, insists he still considers himself the record-holder for Tour victories, even though all seven of his titles were stripped from him last year for doping.  

Armstrong also told the newspaper it was “impossible” to win the Tour at the time he did without doping. Previously he told talk show host Oprah Winfrey that doping was just “part of the job” of being a pro-cyclist.

“The Tour is a test of endurance where oxygen is decisive," Armstrong told Le Monde of the trend back then to cheat by using the hormone erthropoietin, or EPO, because it prompts the body to produce oxygen-carrying blood cells that give a big performance boost to endurance athletes and wasn’t detectable by doping controls until 2001.

But even in his attempt to be forthright, the oft-controversial Armstrong is sparking a backlash. "If he's saying things like he doesn't think that it's possible to win the Tour clean, then he should be quiet - because it is possible," American rider Tejay van Garderen of the BMC team told Le Monde. 

UCI President Pat McQuaid called the timing of Armstrong's comments "very sad.” He later added I can tell him categorically that he is wrong. His comments do absolutely nothing to help cycling. The culture within cycling has changed since the Armstrong era and it is now possible to race and win clean."

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