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'You lying b*****d': Bradley Wiggins has his say on Lance Armstrong's Oprah interview

Reigning Tour de France champ Bradley Wiggins says he still doesn’t believe that Lance Armstrong is telling the truth.

BRADLEY WIGGINS SLAMMED Lance Armstrong’s claims that he was clean when he returned to cycling in 2009 and said that he has no sympathy for the disgraced Texan.

Armstrong last week admitted that he used performance-enhancing drugs during his record run of seven Tour de France wins but insisted in his interview with Oprah Winfrey that he did not dope in the 2009 Tour.

Wiggins’ finish in 2009 was upgraded from fourth to third when Armstrong was stripped off all results from August 1998 onwards and, after watching the interview, the Team Sky star still does not believe Armstrong is telling the truth.

“What upset me the most was about 2009/10 — I thought, you lying bastard,” Wiggins said.

I can still remember going toe to toe with him and watching the man I saw on the top of Verbiers in 2009 to the man I saw on the top of Ventoux a week later when we were in doping control together. It wasn’t the same bike rider.

You only have to watch the videos of how the guy was riding. I don’t believe anything that comes out of his mouth anymore.

Wiggins admits he didn’t want to watch Armstrong’s confession because he had spent so long idolising the American as a youngster.

And when he eventually did sit down with his seven-year-old son to see what Armstrong had to say, Wiggins found it hard to contain his anger.

“Part of me didn’t want to watch it, the fan in me didn’t want that perception of him to be broken as this amazing athlete,” Wiggins said.

Then I had to watch it. I watched it with my seven-year-old son. Those initial questions, the yes/no answers, just watching him suddenly cave in after all those years of lying so convincingly — it was a lot of anger, a lot of sadness and slightly emotional.

It was difficult to watch. My wife couldn’t watch it, she walked out of the room.

He added: “It was heartbreaking in some respects for the sport, but then the anger kicks in…the natural things that most people were thinking when they watched it.

“It’s very difficult and then I have to explain to my son what it’s all about.

“He’s won the same race your dad’s won, but by the end of the hour and a half I had the best feeling in the world about the whole thing.

“There was this element of being quite smug about the whole thing to be honest. Then I got quite ‘you deserve everything you get’ about it.

“In that hour and a half of watching the whole thing, the up and down of the emotions and by the end it was ‘you deserve everything you get now’ and feeling no sympathy whatsoever behind all the welling up and the tears.”

- © AFP, 2013

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