Lance Armstrong: Oprah Winfrey interview 'not enough', say critics

The wife of Lance Armstrong's former team-mate, Frankie Andreu, said she was furious after Armstrong's TV interview where he admitted doping.

Betsy Andreu says she heard Armstrong, 41, admit doping to doctors in 1996, but he refused to discuss the claims.

"I'm really disappointed," Andreu told CNN. "He owed it to me. You owed it to me, Lance, and you dropped the ball.

"After what you've done to me and my family and you couldn't own up to it. And now we're supposed to believe you?"

In an emotional interview, Andreu added: "You had one chance of the truth, this is it. If he's not going to tell the truth, if he can't say 'yes, the hospital room happened' then how are we to believe everything else he is saying?"

Sunday Times journalist David Walsh, who has investigated Armstrong and played a significant part in his downfall, said the interview with Oprah Winfrey did not cover enough ground.

And he also said that Armstrong owed Andreu an apology.

"My feeling is the interview was fine in as far as it went, but it didn't go nearly far enough," Walsh told the BBC.

"I was particularly disappointed he didn't admit what might be called the hospital room admission from 1996 because there is a woman out there, Betsy Andreu, who constantly said she heard him admit using banned performance-enhancing drugs.

"She's been called a liar for more than 10 years and needed Armstrong to say she wasn't lying but he couldn't bring himself to say that.

"He has to name names, that's the kind of detail that will help us move forward in a way that helps cycling."

Walsh's newspaper, the Sunday Times, was sued by Lance Armstrong after accusing him of doping and the Irish journalist said it would seek compensation from the Texan cyclist.

But he said: "On a personal level, I don't want an apology from Lance Armstrong or any explanation, because I was a journalist being paid to do what I did. It was my job and I'm not looking for any thanks from anybody. Any concern I have is for the sources that told the truth and were vilified for it."

One of those was Armstrong's former masseuse, Emma O'Reilly, who was also sued by the American after she publicly denounced his use of performance-enhancing drugs,

But, although he said sorry to her in the course of the interview and admitted bullying her for speaking out about his cheating, she rejected his apology.

O'Reilly, who worked with Armstrong's US Postal Service team from 1996 to 2000, said sorry was "not at all" enough after what he put her through, but that she would not be suing him back because she did not want to employ his tactics.

She said: "I had only ever spoken about it because I hated seeing what some of the riders were going through, because not all the riders were comfortable with cheating as Lance was.

"You could see when they went over to the dark side their personalities change, and I always felt it was an awful shame - these were young lads in the prime of their life having to make this awful decision, kind of living the dream, yet the dream is a nightmare.

"That was always why I had spoken out - it wasn't about Lance, it was about drugs and cycling."

Walsh's fellow Sunday Times journalist Paul Kimmage, a former professional cyclist, said Armstrong had no remorse for the damage and hurt he had caused.

"What is blatantly obvious here is that he regrets one thing: that he was caught, nothing else," Kimmage told BBC Radio 5 live. "Betsy Andreu could be impoverished now, her husband could have committed suicide, David Walsh could have lost his job, I could have lost my job. Lance Armstrong would not give a damn had any of that happened.

"I have absolutely no sympathy whatsoever for him, in fact I have more contempt. I didn't think it was possible for me to feel more contempt for this man than I did before I sat down to watch that programme.

"During the first minute I thought Oprah did terrifically well when she restricted the answers to 'yes' and 'no', but after that it was downhill and by the end of it I was extremely frustrated and disappointed.

"Unless there is a definite decision for someone to say: 'How did this happen?' then this is going to happen again and again."