If Lance Armstrong could go back in time, he’d do it all again.
Armstrong, who was stripped of his seven Tour de France titles and banned from professional cycling in 2012 for using performance-enhancing drugs throughout his career, told BBC Sport that he’d use PEDs again under the same circumstances he faced.
“If I was racing in 2015? No, I wouldn’t do it again,” Armstrong said, per ESPN. “Because I don’t think you have to do it again. If you take me back to 1995, when it was completely and totally pervasive? (I’d) probably do it again.”
Armstrong said that he and other cyclists used PEDs simply to keep up with others who were using them.
“Listen, if I go back to 1995 — and some started earlier, some a little later, but let’s take that as ground zero — I think we’re all sorry,” Armstrong said. “And do you know what we’re sorry for? We’re sorry that we were put in that place. None of us wanted to be in that place. We all would have loved to have competed man on man, bread, water, naturally clean, whatever you want (to) call it.
“We’re sorry. Yeah, we’re sorry that we were put in a place and we looked around as desperate kids and thought: ‘God, I’ve got to go back to Plano (Texas) and maybe go back to school, or get a job, or work in a bike shop or work in a factory.’ Or a kid goes back to Australia, or Eastern Europe, or the fields of France.”
Thumbnail photo via Tom Pennington/Getty Images
