Having been the first person to speak to the media about drug taking by Lance Armstrong and his US Postal team, Irish soigneur Emma O’Reilly has come face to face with the American for the first time in 13 years.
In a meeting at which Daily Mail reporter Matt Lawton was present and which was recorded, O’Reilly has spoken to Armstrong for the first time since she left his team in 2000 having worked as a soigneur for the US-based outfit.
“It was too big a situation to just have a chat about it on the phone,” O’Reilly tells the Mail of their meeting in the town of Celebration, Florida.
“I wanted to eyeball him. You can't keep kicking an injured dog. I wasn't here to humiliate him. But I wanted closure.'”
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Armstrong had previously described O’Reilly as an alcoholic and whore, a wild accusation which was obviously completely without foundation but nonetheless had a huge effect on the Irishwoman and her then partner Mike Carlisle who had MS
“I took what you said about me on the chin but what upset me more was the way it hurt my boyfriend at the time, Mike,” O'Reilly says to Armstrong.
“You're a lad's lad, Lance, and if someone had said that about your girlfriend you'd be very upset.”
“I never expected to see Emma,” Armstrong says.
“I wanted to talk to her. I felt it was necessary to have a conversation because there were definitely people that got caught up in this story who deserved an apology from me. When I reached out in January it was to talk. Emma, I appreciate, wasn't ready for that. But it's good that, tonight, we are doing this in person.”
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“At the time, when I said what I said about her, I was fighting to protect a lot of positions. But it was inexcusable. It's embarrassing. I was in a conference room, giving a legal deposition, and I had no idea it was going to get out. But that doesn't excuse it. I guess you should always assume that, in that setting, the whole world will watch it the next day. It was totally humiliating for Emma. And if I saw my son do that, there would be a f***ing war in our house.”
O’Reilly said she initially spoke out because she could not stay silent about the drug taking she was aware of. However, according to the Mail video and feature interview she was not without sympathy for the man she once worked closely with.
“I felt I was part of the problem," she said of her time with Armstrong and US Postal.
That period included his first of seven Tour de France wins during which traces of steroids were found when he was tested. A back-dated prescription was produced to pass off the result as traces from a cream containing steroids for saddle sores.
Armstrong has said in the Mail piece that former UCI president Hein Verbruggen knew of the test result at the time and encouraged the cover up. He has always denied any wrongdoing.
Said O'Reilly: "The doctors were allowing riders to seriously mess with their health and my silence was enabling it to continue. It was almost like I'd be lying if I didn't tell the truth.”
Addressing Armstrong, and according to the Mail piece, she says: "Lance, the people who should have been protecting the riders weren't protecting you."
Speaking to journalist Matt Lawton while travelling to the US - on a trip the paper says she funded herself - she adds: “Lance is taking the blame for everyone and I just don't feel that is right. He is serving a lifetime ban when other riders on the team have served six-month suspensions. Why are they only going after Lance? Why are they not going after all the owners of the team?”
The video above is the only one released by the Mail at the time of writing. It is very short at just over two minutes in length. If the newspaper releases a longer version we will bring it to you.
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