A huge shock for the sport, a difficult test for the man.
The American Lance Armstrong, stripped of his seven victories in the Tour de France (1999-2005) for doping, admits in the podcast
The Great Unlearn
to having suffered from
“post-traumatic stress”
after his thunderous confessions in 2013.
“When the When people hear this word, they immediately think of men who fought in war and lost friends, saw death up close, or killed people.
But it’s not reserved exclusively for soldiers,”
he explains.
If the Texan has long been reluctant to do therapy, confiding in 2014 that his way of treating himself was
“to ride a bike, play golf and drink a beer”
, he confesses to having ultimately needed it because of the
“list of legal proceedings as long as an arm”
and the fall in his income.
“In the blink of an eye, I went from hero to zero,”
he confides.
You can’t go through all these things without suffering from post-traumatic stress.”
“Heavy operation”
Lance Armstrong therefore went to Tennessee to follow a five-day therapeutic retreat,
“all alone, one-on-one, ten hours a day”
.
He explains:
“If my previous experiences were like a bandage, this one was like a major operation.”
Also read: Lance Armstrong got married near Aix-en-Provence
The former US Postal rider retired from cycling permanently in January 2011, a year before the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) managed to prove his doping enterprise.
The International Cycling Union banned him from cycling for life.
It was in 2013, during an interview with presenter Oprah Winfrey, that Lance Armstrong admitted in front of the cameras to having resorted to doping practices.