Thursday, March 14, 2013

Lobby group urge Armstrong to make full confession

By John Mehaffey

LONDON (Reuters) - Disgraced U.S. cyclist Lance Armstrong has been personally urged to make a full confession of all his involvement in doping by the founder of the lobby group Change Cycling Now.

Lance Armstrong walks back to his car after running at Mount Royal park with fans in Montreal August 29, 2012. REUTERS/Christinne Muschi

Jaimie Fuller, who formed the group which includes former Tour de France champion Greg Lemond, told Reuters on Wednesday he had talked to Armstrong for an hour on the telephone last month.

He said the pair had subsequently had email exchanges after Fuller had told Armstrong he needed to talk to the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA). Fuller said he planned to have further contacts.

Last year USADA stripped Armstrong of his seven Tour de France titles and in a subsequent television interview with Oprah Winfrey the American admitted he had taken performance-enhancing drugs before each of his tour victories.

Fuller, who is also the chief executive officer of the compression clothing company SKINS, earlier told the Tackling Doping in Sport 2013 conference that he had wanted to believe Armstrong was clean. Last year SKINS sent a legal demand to the International Cycling Union seeking damages of $2 million for what it claimed was mis-management in the Armstrong case.

"The thing that upset me most about Lance was not the doping. We now know how prevalent the doping was, how entrenched it has been in the culture of cycling," Fuller told the conference convened by the World Sports Law Report.

"What upset me most all the other things that surrounded him, the way he abused people, the way that he just climbed all over people, the win at all costs.

"I had a conversation with him not long ago and I said to him it's going to get worse for him before it gets better. I think he's bit delusional.

"He's got to come clean, he's got to tell everything. We didn't see that on Oprah Winfrey, what we saw on Oprah Winfrey was the convenient truths. And when it was inconvenient we didn't get the truth.

"That includes not protecting other people he's still protecting. He needs to show a bit of contrition."

(Editing by Pritha Sarkar)

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