Cycling icon Lance Armstrong has peeled back the curtain on his calculated strategy to outsmart anti-doping measures during his illustrious career.
As reported by Marca, the 52-year-old, once a beacon of cycling prowess, now admits to orchestrating a meticulous dance with the ticking clock of performance-enhancing drugs in his bloodstream, effectively dodging the clutches of detection by anti-doping testers.
Armstrong's precipitous fall from grace in 2012, marked by the stripping of his seven Tour de France victories and a lifetime ban from cycling, was a seismic moment in the sporting world.
The catalyst for this upheaval was his deep entanglement in a web of systematic doping practices that unraveled under scrutiny.
The former cycling champion, whose name had become synonymous with both glory and controversy, finally relinquished his cloak of denial and faced the truth during a candid 2013 interview with Oprah Winfrey.
Now, in an intriguing revelation on Bill Maher's Club Random podcast, Armstrong reveals the layers of his strategic evasion from the anti-doping juggernaut.
"You would foil the system," Armstrong divulged.
"What I always said, and I'm not trying to justify what I said as something I would want to repeat again, but one of the lines was, 'I've been tested 500 times and I've never failed a drug test'. That's not a lie. That's the truth. There was no way around the test. When I pissed in the cup and they tested the piss in the cup, it passed," he added.
Yet, Armstrong's confessions delve deeper into the intricacies of his subterfuge.
The linchpin of his evasion strategy rested on the ephemeral nature of performance-enhancing substances in the bloodstream.
"Now, the reality and the truth of all of this is, that some of these substances, primarily the one that is the most beneficial, have a four-hour half-life. So certain substances, whether it be cannabis or anabolics, or whatever, have much longer half-lives," Armstrong explained.
The cycling maverick continued to unravel the science behind his covert tactics, focusing on EPO (erythropoietin), a notorious performance enhancer.
"With EPO, which was the rocket fuel that changed not just our sport but every endurance sport, you have a four-hour half-life, so it leaves the body very quickly. With a four-hour half-life, you can just do the math," he explained.
