PORTO VECCHIO, Corsica – Lance Armstrong made himself the uninvited guest at the Tour de France on Friday, coming back to haunt the 100th edition of the race before its start Saturday and infuriating riders both past and present by talking at length in a newspaper interview about doping in the sport.
Armstrong told the French newspaper Le Monde that he still considers himself the record-holder for Tour victories, even though all seven of his titles from 1999 to 2005 were stripped from him last year for doping.
He said his life has been ruined by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency investigation that exposed as lies his years of denials that he and his teammates doped. He also took another swipe at cycling's top administrators, darkly suggesting they could be brought down by other skeletons in the sport's closet.
None of the comments broke new ground, but in answering questions from Le Monde — a newspaper he scorned when he was competing — Armstrong ensured that his views on doping at the Tour would have maximum effect in France and couldn't easily be written off as sour grapes hurled from afar.
The interview with the rider and his assertion that doping won't be eradicated from cycling dominated French airwaves before the race start Saturday, causing dismay and anger in the sport desperate to prove that it has turned the page on his era of serial cheating.
The Tour's director, Christian Prudhomme, suggested Armstrong was milking the race's notoriety to further his own agenda.
"This is a very big tournament; just look around: There are 2,300 accredited journalists here; there are cameras everywhere. So if someone wanted to transmit a message, this is the time, obviously, especially since everyone likes this kind of controversial statements," he said.
Armstrong's claim that it was "impossible" to win the Tour without doping in his era echoed what he already told TV host Oprah Winfrey in January, when he finally confessed. Then, he said doping was "part of the job." The banned hormone erythropoietin, or EPO, wasn't detectable by cycling's doping controls until 2001 and so was widely abused because it prompts the body to produce oxygen-carrying red blood cells, giving a big performance boost to endurance athletes.
"The Tour is a test of endurance where oxygen is decisive," Le Monde quoted Armstrong as saying. It published the interview in French.
Asked later by the Associated Press to clarify his comments, Armstrong confirmed on Twitter he was talking solely about the period from 1999 to 2005. He indicated that doping might not be necessary now.
"Today? I have no idea. I'm hopeful it's possible," Armstrong tweeted.
Still, his comments touched a nerve.
Jean-Rene Bernaudeau, manager of the Europcar team, likened Armstrong to a robber who tells a bank how it should be run.
"I don't think it is nice that a guy who embodies a decade we should completely forget gives us lessons on how we should behave, while we were the ones who suffered during that time. It is almost surreal," he said.
