Wiggins 'Emotional' And 'Angry' About Armstrong Doping Confession
- 11 years ago
Tour de France and Olympic time trial champion Bradley Wiggins said he was 'emotional' and had no sympathy for Lance Armstrong after watching the disgraced American confess to years of doping.
Armstrong won seven straight Tour de France titles from 1999 but had them stripped when he was found guilty of doping in October last year before he spoke about his wrongdoings for the first time on American television last week.
Wiggins at first said he would not watch the interview but eventually tuned in - with his seven-year-old son.
"I actually just wanted to watch it come out of his own mouth, you know, and so that opening sequence with the yes and no answers to watch him to admit to all those things made you angry, sad, slightly emotional if I'm honest," Wiggins said on Thursday (January 24) at Team Sky's training camp in Majorca.
Wiggins, who was beaten to third place by Armstrong in the 2009 Tour, said he felt sorry for what had happened to his idol but the thought of potentially never standing on the podium because of the American made him angry.
"I'm not sympathetic for what he did not at all but as a human being just watching someone that I admired for so long become that, I mean in every sense of the word fall from grace," Wiggins added. "That's what I found sad but then the anger kicks in and I raced against this guy and he stopped me from getting third in the Tour de France and had I not won the Tour last year I would never have got to experience standing on the podium on the Champs-Elysees with my family and everything there. So, you know, the anger starts to come in then."
Armstrong won seven straight Tour de France titles from 1999 but had them stripped when he was found guilty of doping in October last year before he spoke about his wrongdoings for the first time on American television last week.
Wiggins at first said he would not watch the interview but eventually tuned in - with his seven-year-old son.
"I actually just wanted to watch it come out of his own mouth, you know, and so that opening sequence with the yes and no answers to watch him to admit to all those things made you angry, sad, slightly emotional if I'm honest," Wiggins said on Thursday (January 24) at Team Sky's training camp in Majorca.
Wiggins, who was beaten to third place by Armstrong in the 2009 Tour, said he felt sorry for what had happened to his idol but the thought of potentially never standing on the podium because of the American made him angry.
"I'm not sympathetic for what he did not at all but as a human being just watching someone that I admired for so long become that, I mean in every sense of the word fall from grace," Wiggins added. "That's what I found sad but then the anger kicks in and I raced against this guy and he stopped me from getting third in the Tour de France and had I not won the Tour last year I would never have got to experience standing on the podium on the Champs-Elysees with my family and everything there. So, you know, the anger starts to come in then."