Armstrong feels that the climate of cycling in the 1990s made it necessary to cheat.
Disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong has said that he would probably make the same choices again if taken back to the 1990s, according to an interview with the BBC, with the American feeling that the climate of the sport at the time made it almost impossible not to use performance enhancing drugs.
Armstrong was stripped of his Tour de France titles when it was uncovered that he was involved in a huge doping operation with his team during his 1990s heyday, but Armstrong has suggested that, with the pressure that he was under, it was probably something that he would do again in the same cycling climate:
“When I made the decision, when my team made that decision, when the whole peloton made that decision, it was a bad decision and an imperfect time.”
“But it happened. And I know what happened because of that. I know what happened to the sport, I saw its growth.”
The American did suggest that he would change the way that he acted towards others during the period and his behaviour in general, but not the specific decision to dope:
“I would want to change the man that did those things, maybe not the decision, but the way he acted.”
Reflecting on his return to the sport in the late 2000s, Armstrong insisted that he did not dope during that time, whilst he also suggested that he still feels as though he legitimately won the Tour de France titles that he was stripped of once the doping came to light:
“I don’t think history is stupid, history rectifies a lot of things. If you ask me what happens in 50 years, I don’t think it sits empty… I feel like I won those Tours.”
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