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Lance Armstrong has been facing doping allegations ever since his first Tour de France victory in 1999.
And he very well could have been lying about it since way back then too.
“They say, 'This is a new guy in the Tour. It can't be. He must be doped.’ It's unfortunate,” Armstrong said during a TV interview on the way to winning his first Tour.
Armstrong is said to have confessed to using performance enhancing drugs in an interview with Oprah Winfrey that will air Thursday and Friday nights. Until then, we won't know when he started doping or how often or any other specifics.
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And it's very possible we won't know even after seeing the interview, which lasted 2-1/2 hours. Depends on how much Armstrong decided to reveal -- and if he's finally being completely truthful.
But until then, most of us will probably assume that he was lying when he made the above statement, as well as many others through the years.
In a 2001 Nike commercial (see above), Armstrong said: “Everybody wants to know what I'm on. What am I on? I'm on my bike, busting my ass six hours a day.”
He wrote in his 2003 biography "Every Second Counts": “Luke's name is Armstrong and people know that name, and when he goes to school I don't want them to say, `Oh yeah, your dad's the big fake, the doper.’ That would just kill me.”
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A 2004 news conference gave Armstrong the opportunity to declare, “We're sick and tired of these allegations and we're going to do everything we can to fight them. They're absolutely untrue.”
In 2005, he made himself perfectly clear in videotaped testimony: “How many times do I have to say it? … Well, if it can't be any clearer than 'I've never taken drugs ... .’ "
The cancer survivor's denials continued at an Aspen, Colo., public forum in 2007. “I came out of a life-threatening disease. I was on my death bed," Armstrong said. "You think I'm going to come back into a sport and say, 'OK, OK doctor, give me everything you've got, I just want to go fast?' No way! I would never do that.”
And, finally, in a 2009 Associated Press interview: “At the end of the day, I have nothing to hide.”
Wow. A (possible) lie paired with a sports cliche. Now that's unforgivable.
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The Associated Press contributed to this report.