O’Reilly says sorry was ‘not at all’ enough

Lance Armstrong’s former Irish masseuse has rejected his apology after he admitted bullying her for speaking out about his cheating.

Emma O’Reilly, who the Texan cyclist sued after she publicly denounced his use of performance-enhancing drugs, said his confession was “old news” to her.

In his interview with Oprah Winfrey, Armstrong said he had bullied O’Reilly for telling the truth about his drug-taking.

Speaking yesterday, O’Reilly said she had missed a call from Armstrong on Sunday because of poor coverage, but that he had sent a text saying: “This is Lance, call me please, thanks.”

She said sorry was “not at all” enough after what he put her through, but that she would not be suing him back because she did not want to employ his tactics.

Asked if she felt vindicated by Armstrong’s fall from grace, she said: “All of it has never felt like vindication – I can never think of another word to use, but I hate that word because it suggests almost that there was some vindictiveness. I had only ever spoken about it because I hated seeing what some of the riders were going through, because not all the riders were comfortable with cheating as Lance was. You could see when they went over to the dark side their personalities changed, and I always felt it was an awful shame – these were young lads in the prime of their life having to make this awful decision, kind of living the dream, yet the dream is a nightmare.”

Meanwhile, Betsy Andreu – the wife of Armstrong’s former team-mate Frankie — reacted furiously to the Oprah interview, claiming Armstrong is still not being honest about his past.

Andreu claimed she heard the 41-year-old telling doctors at Indiana University Hospital that he had used performance-enhancing drugs.

Armstrong, who described her as “crazy” claimed on Thursday night, said he had apologised for his behaviour but would not confirm the hospital conversation took place.

But Andreu was far from satisfied with Armstrong’s confession.

“I’m really disappointed,” she said: “He owed it 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 (and confession to the doctor about drug use) happened,’ then how are we to believe everything else he’s saying?

“I want to believe that Lance wants to come clean., but this is giving me an indication that I can’t.

“This is a guy who used to be my friend, who decimated me. He could have come clean, he owed it to me.

“He owes it to the sport that he destroyed and when he says he doesn’t like the UCI, that’s a bunch of crap. He had the UCI in his back pocket.”