A televised confession by Lance Armstrong isn't enough.
Anti-doping officials want the disgraced cyclist to admit his guilt
under oath before considering whether to lift a lifetime ban clouding
his future as a competitive athlete. That was seconded by at least one
former teammate whom Armstrong pushed aside on his way to the top of the
Tour de France podium.
"Lance knows everything that happened," Frankie Andreu told The
Associated Press on Tuesday. "He's the one who knows who did what
because he was the ringleader. It's up to him how much he wants to
expose."
Armstrong has been in conversations with U.S. Anti-Doping Agency
officials, touching off speculation that he may be willing to cooperate
with authorities there and name names.
Interviewer Oprah Winfrey didn't say if the subject was broached
during the taping Monday at a downtown Austin hotel. In an appearance on
"CBS This Morning," she declined to give details of what Armstrong told
her, but said she was "mesmerized and riveted by some of his answers."
Asked whether the disgraced cyclist appeared genuinely contrite after
a decade of fierce denials, Winfrey replied, "I felt that he was
thoughtful, I thought that he was serious, I thought that he certainly
had prepared for this moment. I would say that he met the moment."
She was promoting what has become a two-part special, Thursday and Friday, on her OWN network.
Around the same time, World Anti-Doping Agency officials issued a
statement saying nothing short of "a full confession under oath" would
cause them to reconsider Armstrong's lifetime ban from sanctioned
events.
The International Cycling Union also urged Armstrong to tell his
story to an independent commission it has set up to examine claims that
the sport's governing body hid suspicious samples from the cyclist,
accepted financial donations from him and helped him avoid detection in
doping tests.
The ban was only one of several penalties handed to Armstrong after a
scathing, 1,000-page report by USADA last year. The cyclist was also
stripped of his seven Tour de France titles, lost nearly all of his
endorsements and was forced to cut ties with the Livestrong cancer
charity he founded in 1997.
The report portrayed Armstrong as the mastermind of a long-running
scheme that employed steroids, blood boosters such as EPO, and a range
of other performance-enhancers to dominate the tour. It included
revealing testimony from 11 former teammates, including Andreu and his
wife, Betsy.
"A lot of it was news and shocking to me," Andreu said. "I am sure
it's shocking to the world. There's been signs leading up to this moment
for a long time. For my wife and I, we've been attacked and ripped
apart by Lance and all of his people, and all his supporters repeatedly
for a long time. I just wish they wouldn't have been so blind and opened
up their eyes earlier to all the signs that indicated there was
deception there, so that we wouldn't have had to suffer as much.
"And it's not only us," he added, "he's ruined a lot of people lives."
Armstrong was believed to have left for Hawaii. The street outside
his Spanish-style villa on Austin's west side was quiet the day after
international TV crews gathered there hoping to catch a glimpse of him.
Nearby, members of his legal team mapped out a strategy on how to handle
at least two pending lawsuits against Armstrong, and possibly a third.
The AP reported earlier Tuesday that Justice Department officials
were likely to join a whistleblower lawsuit against Armstrong by former
teammate Floyd Landis, citing a source who works outside the government
and requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the
record about the matter.
The lawsuit by Landis, who was stripped of the 2006 Tour de France
title after testing positive, alleges that Armstrong defrauded the U.S.
government by repeatedly denying he used performance-enhancing drugs.
The deadline to join the False Claims Act lawsuit, which could require
Armstrong to return substantial sponsorship fees and pay a hefty
penalty, is Thursday.
Landis is hardly the only one seeking money back from Armstrong.
During his long reign as cycling champion, Armstrong scolded some
critics in public, didn't hesitate to punish outspoken riders during the
race, and waged legal battles against still others in court.
The London-based Sunday Times has already filed a lawsuit to recover
about $500,000 it paid Armstrong to settle a libel case, and
Dallas-based SCA Promotions, which tried to deny him a promised bonus
for a Tour de France win, has threatened to bring another lawsuit
seeking to recover more than $7.5 million awarded by an arbitration
panel.
In Australia, the government of the state of South Australia said it
will seek the repayment of several million dollars in appearance fees
paid to Armstrong for competing in the Tour Down Under in 2009, 2010 and
2011.
"We'd be more than happy for Mr. Armstrong to make any repayment of monies to us," South Australia Premier Jay Weatherill said.
