Lance on Oprah

Lance Armstrong finally confessed to using performance enhancing drugs during his cycling career on Thursday, admitting he cheated to win all seven of his Tour de France titles.

Describing himself as a "bully" and a "deeply flawed character", Armstrong ended years of denials by revealing his darkest secrets in an interview with talk show host Oprah Winfrey at his hometown of Austin, Texas.

In the opening question of the televised interview recorded three days earlier, one word was all it took to dismiss any remaining doubt his success on the bike was fueled by doping.

"Yes," he replied when asked directly whether he used performance enhancing drugs.

True to her word, Winfrey rapidly fired probing questions at Armstrong, offering him little respite and grilling him about every aspect of his tainted career.

Without any hesitation, and showing no signs of emotion, Armstrong replied "yes" to a series of questions about whether he used specific drugs, including erythropoietin, human growth hormone and blood doping.

Asked why he had repeatedly lied about using banned substances until Thursday's startling admission, he told Winfrey: "I don't know I have a great answer.

"This is too late, probably for most people, and that's my fault. I view this situation as one big lie that I repeated a lot of times.

"It's not as if I said no and moved off it. While I've lived through this process, I know the truth. The truth isn't what I said and now its gone."

A cancer survivor who inspired millions with what had seemed like a fairytale career, Armstrong said he did not believe he could have achieved what he did without breaking the rules due to the culture of drugs in cycling.

"Not in that generation. I didn't invent the culture, but I didn't try to stop the culture," he said.

"It's hard to talk about the culture. I don't want to accuse anyone else. I'm here to acknowledge my mistakes."

He said he never considered himself to be a cheat and was sure he would get away with it, until out of competition tests were introduced and testing procedures dramatically improved.

On Thursday, Armstrong was stripped of his 2000 Olympic Games cycling time trial bronze medal by the International Olympic Committee, continuing the once dominant rider's spectacular fall from grace after a doping storm.

"We have written asking for the return of the medal from the Sydney 2000 Games," an IOC official told Reuters on Thursday after the decision to take away the last major title held by the disgraced American.

The retired Armstrong was stripped of his seven Tour de France titles and banned for life by the International Cycling Union (UCI) in October after several riders testified that he took drugs.

The testimony came in a United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) report in which the 41-year-old's former U.S Postal team was accused of running "the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen".

Armstrong, a cancer survivor who founded the Livestrong Foundation, has always denied wrongdoing.

CBS Television reported on Tuesday the former rider had offered to pay more that $5 million to the U.S. government in compensation for an alleged fraud against the U.S. Postal Service, which for years sponsored his cycling team.

The network also said he had offered to co-operate as a witness in a U.S. investigation but the Department of Justice turned down his request, raising the prospect that he could yet serve time in prison.