London, Oct 12(ANI): Olympic champion Bradley Wiggins has claimed if it wasn't for the right system in British Cycling, his fate could have also been like the disgraced American cyclist Lance Armstrong due to the massive peer pressure in the sport.
Wiggins also said he was shocked at the amount of evidence levelled at Armstrong in a US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) report.
The USADA report, released on Wednesday, accused Armstrong of drug taking on a massive scale and being the ringleader of a doping conspiracy.
Wiggins, the Tour de France winner this year, quoted the example of former Team Sky teammate Michael Barry, who admitted to doping and testified against Armstrong in the USADA inquiry.
"It's not about Armstrong, it's about the culture of the sport for so many years. People like Michael Barry, I can relate to that, I turned pro 10 years ago, and how it felt going in aged 22, with the peer pressure with the likes of Lance Armstrong in a team like US Postal where it was systematic," the Telegraph quoted Wiggins, as saying.
"You stand by the decisions you make then for the rest of your life, David Millar was the same. You shouldn't persecute people forever, we're not talking about Jimmy Savile here," he added.
"But those decisions stay with you for your whole career and I was very fortunate that I was in a system in British Cycling that, regardless of what team I was in, they supported me with the right way to deal with it. They probably saved me otherwise it might have been me, who knows. The peer pressure was huge. But the culture has changed," he said. (ANI)
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