Cycling at a low ebb but is redeemable, says Cooke

Lance Armstrong, the American cyclist who was stripped of his seven Tour de France victories after an investigation by the US Anti-Doping Agency, talks about it for the first time tonight.

He is questioned at his home in Texas in an interview by chat show host Oprah Winfrey. The interview will air in the US and on the internet in the early hours of Friday morning.

This afternoon Armstrong apologised to staff at the cancer charity he helped found. It is thought pressure from Livestrong funders has led to Armstrong’s decision to open up.

The US Anti Doping Agency says the 41-year-old was at the very heart of “the most sophisticated, professionalised and successful doping programme” ever seen in sport.

Stealing opportunities

Olympics road race gold medalist Nicole Cooke slammed the drug cheats – like Lance Armstrong – who have tarnished her sport.

The 2008 Beijing champion has just announced her retirement from cycling, and condemned those who, through cheating, stole opportunities from clean athletes.

Speaking to Krishnan Guru-Murthy on Channel 4 News, Ms Cooke cited the example of a friend, Peter, who came to Europe from the US to ride in a cycling team in Italy.

“Within a couple of weeks of arriving, the team spoke to him and wanted to find out how much drugs he was going to do,” she said.

Thrown off the team

Peter decided to have nothing to do with this and to see how far his career could progress – but he was thrown off the team “and he didn’t make it… because he’d said no to the people pushing the drugs onto him”.

But the former Olympic champion said she believed cycling was still redeemable. “It has taken catastrophic events like now to bring the reality of it to people’s attention, but there is so much going on with people like myself, that do want to ride clean.”

And she concluded: “Hopefully those people will stop being a minority now and actually become the majority.”