Armstrong Set to Appear on Oprah Next Week, as New Allegation Surfaces

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http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/08/armstrong-set-to-appear-on-oprah-next-week-as-new-allegation-surfaces/

Armstrong Set to Appear on Oprah Next Week, as New Allegation Surfaces
By ROBERT MACKEY

The year before his seventh and final Tour de France victory, Lance Armstrong offered to donate “in excess of $150,000″ to the antidoping agency in charge of keeping American athletes from using performance-enhancing drugs, according to the organization’s chief executive.

The latest accusation against Armstrong, the disgraced former cyclist, was made by the current head of the United States Anti-Doping Agency, Travis Tygart, in an interview with CBS News posted online on Tuesday. In October, Usada stripped Armstrong of all of his titles and barred him from competition for life following the release of a 202-page report into what the agency called “the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen.”

As my colleague Juliet Macur reported, Armstrong, who has so far denied all allegations of cheating, “has told associates and antidoping officials that he is considering publicly admitting that he used banned performance-enhancing drugs and blood transfusions during his cycling career.” Late Tuesday, Oprah Winfrey announced that she “will speak exclusively with Lance Armstrong in his first no-holds-barred interview,” to be broadcast next week on her network.

As the cycling journalist Lionel Birnie notes, the Oprah Winfrey Network is a joint venture with Discovery Communications, the broadcaster that sponsored Armstrong’s team in 2005.