Lance Armstrong shares advice to 18-year-old self on podcast

Armstrong says two biggest mistakes in his life are doping and the mistreatment of others.

Lance Armstrong appeared on this week’s episode of the Movember Podcast with CEO Adam Garone to share his experiences on life after his doping confession. 

In 2012, the United States Anti-Doping Agency erased 14 years of Armstrong's career—including his record seven Tour de France titles—and banned him for life from the sport after concluding he used performance enhancing drugs.

Armstrong reflected on what he would have done differently by giving advice to himself as an 18-year-old. 

“There are really two big mistakes that I’ve made in most people's minds—everyone’s mind—and that was the doping and the treatment of others,” Armstrong said. “I think as time goes on, people understand that the doping was just what it was. It really was completely pervasive. Your choice was to go home and no one took that choice, geared up and stayed. All those people that made that first mistake – that now nobody cares about – none of them treated people like s---. None of them attacked another human being. None of them sued another human being. And I did all those things.”

”My words to an 18 year old me would be, ‘Understand you may face some decisions in the sport. But man, don’t ever isolate, attack, ostracize, incite another human being.’ We’re not talking about this because I doped. We’re talking about all of this because of the way I treated other people.”

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Armstrong says that he has accepted his mistake and has spent the last three years of his life trying to make amends with some of the people that he lost as he denied the continuous doping allegations.

In the USADA report regarding his positive test, 10 of Armstrong's former teammates were set to testify against him. Among the people that he wronged is Betsy Andreu, who testified to a federal investigation into Armstrong back in 2005. In his confession with Oprah Winfrey, he did not issue an apology and said that he never called Andreu “fat.”

“I said ‘listen, I called you crazy. I called you a bitch. I called you all these things, but I never called you fat,’” Armstrong told Oprah.

Armstrong continues to live in Austin, Texas with his children.

- Christopher Chavez