You're still lying, Lance

“Too many questions not answered and refusal to confirm hospital room admission was deeply disappointing. Betsy Andreu will be disgusted.”

Andreu, whose husband Frankie had been a former team-mate of Armstrong, was among the first to point towards Armstrong’s doping indiscretions.

She testified that Armstrong admitted to doping while in his hospital bed in 1996 battling cancer, an accusation that the former rider denied under oath and an issue he refused to discuss with Oprah, much to Andreu’s chagrin.

She said: “I’m really disappointed. He owed [the truth] to me. You owed it to me Lance and you dropped the ball. After what you’ve done to me, what you’ve done to my family, and you couldn’t own up to it.

“And now we’re supposed to believe you? You had one chance at 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’s saying? We’re already questioning him.”

Walsh also tweeted: “Lest anyone forget, he did this interview because his reputation/brand was in the gutter. Only time will tell how much it helps. When he said he was behaving like a jerk during those years, I thought, ‘Lance, I could have told you that back then’.”

British Olympic cycling gold medallist Nicole Cooke, who retired from the sport this week with a tirade against Armstrong and the sport’s drug culture, described the interview as “a pantomime”.

“He’s got no morals — he is a disgusting human being,” she said today. “Lance Armstrong should have been taken to court not an Oprah Winfrey sofa.”

More revelations are expected in the early hours of tomorrow morning when part two of the interview is aired. His confession to date, despite criticisms from WADA and Andreu, was welcomed by cycling’s governing body, the UCI, who Armstrong says he wishes to work with in moving the sport forward.

During his interview, he said: “If there was a truth and reconciliation commission — and I can’t call for that — and I’m invited, I’ll be the first man through the door.”

In response, UCI president Pat McQuaid said: “We note that Lance Armstrong expressed a wish to participate in a truth and reconciliation process. We would welcome that.”

Of his doping confession, McQuaid added: “Lance Armstrong’s decision finally to confront his past is an important step forward on the long road to repairing the damage that has been caused to cycling and to restoring confidence in the sport.

“It was disturbing to watch him describe a litany of offences including, among others, doping throughout his career, leading a team that doped, bullying, consistently lying to everyone and producing a backdated medical prescription to justify a test.”