Lance Armstrong, after "nearly 15 years of defiant denials and denunciations of those who said he had doped his way to success, ... put the lie to all that" in the first part of a taped interview with Oprah Winfrey on OWN. Armstrong said that "he had used performance-enhancing drugs during all seven of his Tour de France victories." But his "admissions in many areas were incomplete" (CHICAGO TRIBUNE, 1/18). Armstrong said, "This is too late, too late for probably most people, and that's my fault" (Mult., 1/18).
The N.Y. TIMES' Alessandra Stanley writes Armstrong "appeared as reasoned and dispassionate telling the truth as he did all those years that he so fluently and convincingly spun a lie." The AUSTIN AMERICAN-STATESMAN's Kirk Bohls: "Transparency was lacking. So was sincerity." ESPN.com's Bonnie Ford: "It was desperate. And huge chunks of it ranged from disingenuous to unbelievable." FOXSPORTS.com's Sam Gardner writes Armstrong "was never particularly contrite, and his outward emotion never really changed."
SPORTSONEARTH.com's Will Leitch collected some quantitative data about Armstrong's answers under the header, "Numbers Don't Lie."
The N.Y. POST features the front-cover tease, "LANCE'S MEA CULPA" ... The N.Y. Daily News on its back page goes with the headline, "He cheated, he bullied, he lied and said he's sorry, but it's ... TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE."
