a href="/myfiles/Images/2013/01/16/sp12.jpg" title="Oprah Winfrey (R) interviewing cyclist Lance Armstrong during taping for the show “Oprah and Lance Armstrong: The Worldwide Exclusive" in Austin, Texas, Tuesday. — AP" Oprah Winfrey (R) interviewing cyclist Lance Armstrong during taping for the show “Oprah and Lance Armstrong: The Worldwide Exclusive" in Austin, Texas, Tuesday. — AP AUSTIN, Texas — Lance Armstrong has finally come clean. Armstrong confessed to doping during an interview with Oprah Winfrey taped Monday, just a couple of hours after a wrenching apology to staff at the Livestrong charity he founded and has now been forced to surrender. The emotional day ended with 2 1/2 hours of questions from Winfrey at a downtown Austin hotel, where she said the world's most famous cyclist was “forthcoming” as she asked him in detail about doping allegations that followed him throughout his seven Tour de France victories. Speaking on “CBS This Morning,” Winfrey said Tuesday she had not planned to address Armstrong's confession before the interview aired on her OWN network but, “by the time I left Austin and landed in Chicago, you all had already confirmed it.” “So I'm sitting here now because it's already been confirmed,” she added. The session was to be broadcast on Thursday but Winfrey said it will now run in two parts over two nights because there is so much material. Winfrey would not characterize whether Armstrong seemed contrite but said he seemed ready for the interview. “I would say he met the moment,” she said. The confession was a stunning reversal for a proud athlete and celebrity who sought lavish praise in the court of public opinion and used courtrooms to punish his critics. For more than a decade, Armstrong dared anybody who challenged his version of events to prove it. Finally, he told the tale himself after promising over the weekend to answer Winfrey's questions “directly, honestly and candidly.” The cyclist was stripped of his Tour titles, lost most of his endorsements and was forced to leave Livestrong last year after the US Anti-Doping Agency issued a damning, 1,000-page report that accused him of masterminding a long-running doping scheme. The International Cycling Union, or UCI, issued a statement Tuesday saying it was aware of the reports that Armstrong had confessed to Winfrey. The governing body for the sport urged Armstrong to tell his story to an independent commission it has set up to examine claims it covered up suspicious samples from the cyclist, accepted financial donations from him and helped him avoid detection in doping tests. Armstrong started Monday with a visit to the headquarters of Livestrong, the charity he founded in 1997 and turned into a global force on the strength of his athletic dominance and personal story of surviving testicular cancer that had spread to his lungs and brain. About 100 Livestrong staff members gathered in a conference room as Armstrong told them “I'm sorry.” He choked up during a 20-minute talk, but stopped short of admitting he used them. Before he was done, several members were in tears when he urged them to continue the charity's mission, helping cancer patients and their families. “Heartfelt and sincere,” is how Livestrong spokeswoman Katherine McLane described his speech. USADA did not respond to requests for comment about Armstrong's confession. — AP
