The disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong has ended years of denial by admitting using performance enhancing drugs.
It's 18 January 2013 at 3:00 in the UK, journalist David Walsh...
is watching Oprah interview Lance Armstrong.
Oprah said, "but will you apologise to David Walsh?" And suddenly I'm just jolted awake. Fully alert.
You know, kind of like, "Oprah I can't believe you're bringing me into this."
And Lance looked at her kind of sheepishly and he said, "that's a good question". And he said, "yes", I will apologise to David.
And I'm kind of now at the edge of my seat and I'm looking at the television
and I'm saying, "no you won't Lance, that's an absolute lie."
David Walsh first started following Lance Armstrong in 1993.
He was a considerable talent and I was hugely impressed by him, really ambitious, completely driven.
So, that was my first impression, but of course that would change radically six years later when Lance came back
to the Tour de France in 1999 after two years away from his problems with cancer.
Lance returned to the Tour de France in 1999.
Just after 1998's "Tour de Farce"...
And the reason why it was regarded as a Tour de Farce was because everywhere French customs or French police looked
they found drugs.
And into this world comes Lance Armstrong.
He'd never been a contender, he'd never been remotely competitive in the mountains, he hadn't been nearly good enough in time trials
but in 1999 he came in and from the first day he dominated the race.
And to me it just looked really suspicious and then when you start to peel the onion
literally your eyes started to water with rage, with sadness, with the sense that nothing has changed.
David went on to write a number of articles accusing Lance Armstrong...
of using performance enhancing drugs.
The headline on the piece in the Sunday Times read "a flawed fairy tale".
On reflection, it was almost a recklessly courageous piece because we had some evidence but not a huge amount.
But what we said in that piece was that "what we need is not acclamation for a new champion but an investigation into how he got there."
And in all the pieces I've written in my life, that was close to the most uniform reaction that I ever got.
In 2004 Lance Armstrong sued Walsh and The Sunday Times for libel.
The paper settled in 2006 and apologised for the accusations.
Armstrong had won seven straigh Tour titles from 1999 to 2005.
It would take until 2012 for this moment to happen...
The disgraced American cyclist Lance Armstrong has been stripped of all seven of his Tour de France titles
and banned from cycling for life.
That felt anti-climactic from my point of view because
it had been going on and on and on and on and the truth was really obvious a long time before this.
And suddenly the world was discovering it like it was something new.
And to us it was, "new? this is the bloody oldest story in town!"
But you know, I am really pleased that the truth came out because that was something I never saw happening.
Did David ever get the apology Armstrong promised?
I think we really did know each other. So when he said he would apologise to me I absolutely knew that he wouldn't
and of course he didn't and still hasn't.
And to be honest, I would never have expected him to.
And it's not something I ever wanted.