BBC Learning English Words in the News Armstrongs confession 18 January 2013

Lance Armstrong, the former cycling champion, has admitted to using drugs to improve his performance for the first time. In an interview with Oprah Winfrey on her OWN Network, Armstrong said he had used drugs during all seven of his Tour de France wins, from 1999 to 2005. From Washington, here's the BBC's correspondent Ben Wright:

The confession took a long time to come. Despite being stripped of his Tour de France titles last year following a doping investigation, Lance Armstrong always denied cheating. But he had been lying. The 41-year-old American cyclist told Oprah Winfrey he used performance enhancing drugs in every Tour de France contest he won. He took banned substances and used blood transfusions to boost his performance. Without them, he said, it wouldn't have been possible to win. Armstrong said he kept repeating "one big lie" and conceded that his admission would be "too late" for most people. "All the fault and all the blame lies with me," Lance Armstrong said. But he claimed his actions had not felt like cheating at the time and denied having pressurised other members of his team to dope.

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British Broadcasting Corporation 2013 Page 1 of 2

Vocabulary and definitions

confession stripped of doping performance enhancing drugs

admission of guilt had taken away using drugs in sport substances used illegally to improve a sportsperson's ability

blood transfusions conceded admission blame cheating pressurised

adding blood to a person's body accepted as true acceptance of the truth responsibility for a bad or wrong act winning by dishonest means strongly tried to influence

Read and listen to the story and the vocabulary online: http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/language/wordsinthenews/2013/01/130118_witn_armstrong.shtml Related News story http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/cycling/21066354

Words in the News bbclearningenglish.com

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