LANCE ARMSTRONG SAYS he tried to apologise to Dublin masseuse Emma O’Reilly for his vicious personal attacks on her.
O’Reilly, who worked with the US Postal Service team from 1996 to 2000, was one of the key whistleblowers in the case against Armstrong who finally admitted his systematic use of performance enhancing drugs on Thursday night.
In the first part of a televised interview with Oprah Winfrey, Armstrong confessed that he used a back-dated prescription to cover up a positive test in 1999, evidence first made public by O’Reilly in her contribution to the book L.A. Confidentiel, co-authored by Sunday Times journalist David Walsh.
The revelation led to Armstrong suing her and also labelling her as a “whore” and an “alcoholic”.
“She’s one of these people that I have to apologise to,” Armstrong told Winfrey. “She’s one of these people who got run over, who got bullied.”
But the disgraced Texan seemed unsure when asked if he had taken legal action against O’Reilly.
“To be honest Oprah we sued so many people… I’m sure we did.”
“I have reached out to her and tried to make those amends on my own.”
Explaining his personal attacks on O’Reilly, Armstrong accepted that his actions were “not good.”
“I was just on the attack — territory being threatened, team being threatened, reputation being threatened. I was on the attack.”
He added: “It’s a major flaw and it’s a guy who expected to get what he wanted and control every outcome. And it’s inexcusable.
“When I say there were people that will hear this that will never forgive me, I understand that. I do. I have started that process. All of this is a process for me. One of the steps in that process is to speak to those people directly and say to them that I am sorry and that I was wrong, you were right.”
