LONDON, Jan 18: A crooked path littered with empty vials and used syringes concluding in a televised confession of systematic doping led Lance Armstrong into the company of the infamous dope cheats who have sullied their sports.
Armstrong told chat show host Oprah Winfrey yesterday he had taken banned performance-enhancing drugs on each of his record seven Tour de France wins. He said they included erythropoietin, the drug at the centre of the 1998 Tour de France doping scandal, human growth hormone and blood doping.
The 41-year-old American joins sprinters Ben Johnson and Marion Jones whose achievements are forever tarnished by the Faustian bargain they struck with the drug pedlars.
Jones, the poster girl for the 2000 Sydney Olympics after announcing she planned to go one better than Jesse Owens and Carl Lewis and win five gold medals, also appeared on the Oprah show in 2008.
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