Irish woman who brought down Lance Armstrong explains deep affection for him

‘I liked him. He was as tough as nails. Mentally...the toughest person I have ever come across’

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Lance Armstrong

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"I suppose in one way Lance was a dreamer, perhaps the biggest dreamer of all. He tried to make his dreams come true. We did get on well and I was incredibly fond of him and he was good to me."

"I don't feel sorry for him. You don't feel sorry for Lance. I don't mean that in an awful way. Yes, he has a whole heap of problems now, but he will find a way. He will look for a solution.

"I think he isn't a happy camper at the moment and I am glad I am on a different continent but he will get on with things. That's the way he is. He is not a victim. He doesn't lie down and play dead."

She bales team managers and doctor more than Armstrong.

"Johan (Bruyneel, Armstrong's former manager) has been taken down, three doctors, Pepe the courier has been taken down, and that is one of the reasons why I spoke to Usada. I thought: 'right they are not just going against Lance and the other big cyclists they are going after the others,'" she said.

"To me Lance was never the problem ... The riders, to me, were the victims. They were purely the symptom of this massive problem that the sports directors and the doctors were perpetrating on them. The doctors have the responsibility for the health of the riders on their shoulders.

"That's what I had a huge problem with. I was polite to the doctors but I always kept my distance from them. I could never reconcile that these guys had gone to college, taken the Hippocratic oath.

"Fine these lads (cyclists) are making decisions to go on the programme but that was what it was like in the Nineties. You went in the (drugs) programme or you went and looked for another job. If you were not on the programme you were getting your arse handed to you day in day out by riders who you knew were not as good as you."

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