Lance Armstrong Talks Cheating, Admits He “Would Probably Do It Again”

Lance Armstrong admitted in a new interview with BBC Sport that if presented with circumstances similar to those when he was racing in 1995, he would probably cheat again.

"If I was racing in 2015, no, I wouldn't do it again because I don't think you have to," said Armstrong, 43, in his first television interview since his infamous 2013 sit-down with Oprah Winfrey. "If you take me back to 1995, when doping was completely pervasive, I would probably do it again."

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The father of five, who was stripped of his seven Tour de France titles and banned from cycling for life in August 2012, acknowledged his decision to use performance-enhancing drugs was "bad," but said it was "an imperfect time."

"But it happened. And I know what happened because of that," he said. "I know what happened to the sport, I saw its growth."

He also saw a growth in the outreach of the Livestrong Foundation (he stepped down from the board in 2012). A cancer survivor himself, he told the BBC the charity went from "raising no money to raising $500m, serving three million people" during the height of his popularity.

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"Do we want to take it away?" he asked. "I don't think anybody says, 'yes.'"

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So is the world ready for Armstrong to return to public life? "Selfishly, I would say, yeah, we're getting close to that time,'" he said. "But that's me, my word doesn't matter any more. What matters is what people collectively think, whether that's the cycling community, the cancer community."

He also confirmed he's spoken to the Cycling Independent Reform Commission in hopes of getting his ban from the sport lifted or reduced. Per the BBC, he would want something allowing him to "compete in some sport at a fairly high level" while also raising money for charity.

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