Armstrong Addresses Doping Allegations
June 26, 2006 — -- Lance Armstrong is best-known for being a seven-time winner of the grueling bike race, the Tour de France, despite a near-deadly bout with cancer.
Recently, he has been the target of doping allegations that continue to dog him even in retirement.
The embattled Armstrong will present the award for the Best Comeback Athlete of the Year at the forthcoming ESPY Awards, which honor top athletes.
Armstrong won Best Male Athlete three times and won Best Comeback Athlete after his first Tour de France victory in 1999.
Armstrong, 35, said he was really too old for cycling and was "pushing the outer limits" by winning at 34.
Last year was his final Tour, a race he once said he had hated because of all the media attention it had attracted.
Armstrong told ABC News he preferred the preparation in the Alps when he was able to bond with his team.
"That builds up to the race," he said on "Good Morning America." "Then, you get to the race, and there are millions of people there -- some on your side, some not -- dealing with the press. … I mean, it became less enjoyable as the years went on."
On Friday, the French daily Le Monde reported that Armstrong, a Texas native, had admitted to using performance-enhancing drugs in October 1996 to a doctor who had been treating him for cancer.
Armstrong's attorney and the doctor in question deny that the alleged conversation took place.
"I was never that champion that they wanted -- the guy that they saw the suffering on his face every second of the day," Armstrong said of the French media. "I tried to keep a neutral face, sort of robotic face."
While racing along the French countryside, Armstrong said he would often hear people shouting accusations and insults at him.
"The press also influences the people," he said. "What they write or report trickles down directly to the roadside. You're coming through, many times, people who have just read the paper with some salacious headline and people are yelling it at you along the side of the road."
The recent drug allegations are based on last year's testimony by one of Armstrong's former teammates Frankie Andreu and his wife, Betsy.
The couple testified to a Dallas court that they had been with Armstrong when the doctor had asked him about doping and that Armstrong had admitted to using performance enhancers.
Stephanie McIlvain, Armstrong's friend who was also present at the session, testified that Armstrong never said that.
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