Wiggins: Watching Armstrong confess was the best feeling

Tour de France and Olympic time trial champion Bradley Wiggins said he had the "best feeling in the world" and no sympathy for Lance Armstrong after watching the disgraced American confess to years of doping.

Armstrong won seven straight Tour de France titles from 1999 but had them stripped when he was found guilty of doping in October last year before he spoke about his wrongdoings for the first time on American television last week.

Wiggins at first said he would not watch the interview but the Briton in the end tuned in - with his seven-year-old son for company.

"It's heart breaking for the sport and then the anger kicks in. It was difficult," Wiggins said on Thursday at Team Sky's training camp in Mallorca ahead of his season opener on the Spanish island.

"By the end of the hour and a half, I had the best feeling in the world. Part of me didn't want to watch it. The fan in me didn't want that perception of him as an amazing athlete to be broken. Then I got quite: 'You deserve everything you got.' So within two hours of watching the whole thing, the emotions were up and down. By the end I didn't feel any sympathy for him at all."

Wiggins, beaten for third place by Armstrong in the 2009 Tour, said he had felt enormous pride when he told his son he was no cheat.

"I had to explain it to my son because he'd won the same race his dad had won," said the 32-year-old father-of-two.

"When he (Armstrong) started welling up about his 13-year-old son, and him asking what's all this about. I never have to have that conversation with my own son as his father's won the Tour clean.

"There's this element of being quite smug about the whole thing. Watching him suddenly cave in after all these years of lying so convincingly, there was a lot of anger, a lot of sadness and I was slightly emotional as well, if I'm honest.

"It was difficult to watch. My wife couldn't watch it and walked out of the room."

WADA dispute

Meanwhile, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has disputed an assertion by former cycling boss Hein Verbruggen that sports governing bodies typically discussed abnormal doping samples with athletes.

"WADA has no evidence of other international federations 'discussing atypical blood test results, or other test results' with athletes," the global agency said.

Verbruggen, the International Cycling Union (UCI) president from 1991-2005, was quoted by Dutch magazine Vrij Nederland as saying it had informed dozens of riders including Lance Armstrong over the years if they had recorded suspicious test results.

"It used to be the UCI's policy - and indeed also of other federations - to discuss atypical blood test results, or other test results, with the riders concerned," Verbruggen said.

"Riders who were doping (but had not failed a test) were effectively warned that they were being watched and that they would be targeted in future with the aim of getting them to stop doping."

(China Daily 01/26/2013 page15)