The world awaits Lance Armstrong’s public admission of cheating in the next 24 hours. Talk-show host Oprah Winfrey has already revealed Armstrong came clean over his sordid past, which saw him stripped of his seven Tour de France titles and banned for life, when the interview was recorded on Monday in his home city of Austin, Texas. If Armstrong does make a full confession in the interview, which will be shown on the ‘Oprah’ show at 2100 local time tomorrow (0200 GMT on Friday), with the second part to follow 24 hours later, there are likely to be many repercussions. The 41-year-old was banned for life after the United States Anti-Doping Agency found he had been at the heart of “the most sophisticated, professionalised and successful doping programme that sport has ever seen”. The World Anti-Doping Agency and the UCI, cycling’s world governing body, has urged Armstrong to reveal all to the authorities if he is to have any hope of lifting his life ban. The International Olympic Committee, meanwhile, is among those waiting for the interview to be broadcast before considering whether to demand that Armstrong returns the bronze medal he won in the road time-trial at the 2000 Games in Sydney. In December, the IOC postponed a decision on whether to strip Armstrong of the medal because it had to wait until the UCI had declared all his results ineligible. The two-and-a-half-hour interview, brokered between Armstrong and Winfrey over lunch in Hawaii, where both have homes, during the festive season, is to be broadcast over two nights this week. The motives for an admission – revealed by Winfrey – are unclear, but the Texan, who retired from cycling for a second time in 2010, was competing in triathlons until he was banned last year.
