Post date: Jan 18, 2013 12:10:16 PM
Sunday Times reporter and author David Walsh hopes Lance Armstrong's admission of doping will see the British newspaper recoup the money it paid the American after he sued them.
CAMBRIDGE, UNITED KINGDOM (JANUARY 18, 2013) (ITN) - It would be a "travesty of justice" if Britain's Sunday Times did not recoup some of the money it paid Lance Armstrong in 2006 after his admission of doping, their chief sports writer David Walsh said on Thursday (January 18).
Armstrong ended years of vehement denial by finally coming clean and admitting he had cheated his way to a record seven Tour de France titles with systematic use of banned, performance-enhancing drugs.Confessing his "toxic" tale to chat show host Oprah Winfrey, Armstrong described himself as a "flawed character" while at last owning up to being at the centre of one of the biggest drugs scandals in world sport.
The Sunday Times paid out 300,000 pounds sterling to Armstrong in 2004 over a story highlighting Armstrong's links to doping, and is currently pursuing a one million pounds legal claim against the disgraced cyclist.
Walsh has long battled to expose Armstrong's doping and hoped his newspaper would get every penny back.
"They should. It would be a travesty of justice if they don't," Walsh said, after watching the interview.
"The Sunday Times were the only newspaper in 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002 - the Sunday Times was the only newspaper that I know that was consistently questioning Lance Armstrong. That had a position. The position was we didn't believe the guy.
"We were the only ones asking the right question. And the legal system in Britain said 'you're not entitled to ask those questions about the great Lance Armstrong.'
"This is the only country in which he sued. He threatened to sue everywhere else but he never carried it through. He carried it through here and it hurt us."