Sunday Times places #AskLance ad in US newspaper

On Thursday Lance Armstrong appears on the Oprah Winfrey show and may or may not admit to a career fuelled by doping. It appears the show has not been pre-recorded so in order to pressure Oprah into asking tough questions The Sunday Times has placed an advert in the Chicaco Tribune, suggesting ten questions that ought to be asked. Some of the questions were suggested by followers of the Twitter account of David Walsh, chief sports writer at The Sunday Times. Via Twitter, Walsh has also revealed that Oprah’s producer has been interviewing some of the key characters in the Armstrong saga and the disgraced athlete may not get as easy a ride on the Oprah show as many had feared.

The questions on the Chicago Tribune ad are:

1. Did you tell doctors at the Indiana University Hospital on October 27, 1996 that you had taken EPO, human growth hormone, cortisone, steroids and testosterone?

2. After returning from cancer, how did you justify putting banned drugs in your body?

3. Did you have any sympathy for those rivals determined to race clean?

4. Do you regret how you treated Betsy Andreu, your former masseuse Emma O’Reilly and Greg LeMond?

5. Do you admit that your friend Dr Michele Ferrari fully supported your team’s doping?

6. Is it your intention to return the prize money you earned from September 1998 to July 2010?

7. Did you sue The Sunday Times to shut us up?

8. Was your failure to understand Floyd Landis the key to your downfall?

9. Do you accept lying to the cancer community was the greatest deception of all?

10. Why have you chosen Oprah Winfrey for your first interview as a banned athlete?

The advert also stresses that the Sunday Times is in the process of trying to regain $1.5m in damages lost to Armstrong in a case from 2006, when Armstrong sued over an article written by Walsh.

In tandem with the US advert, the Sunday Times has re-released a recent Sunday Times Magazine article and video from Walsh, covering his expose of Armstrong. The article and video are not behind the Murdoch paywall.