Take a look at the key players in the Four Corners investigation into the Lance Armstrong doping scandal:
Lance Armstrong
The United States Anti Doping Agency (USADA) has found that Lance Armstrong, seven-time winner of the Tour de France, was using performance enhancing drugs throughout his racing career, and that he formed part of an organised conspiracy by the US Postal Service Team to conceal their 'doping' from the authorities.
The investigation found:
...direct documentary evidence including financial payments, emails, scientific data and laboratory test results that further prove the use, possession and distribution of performance enhancing drugs by Lance Armstrong and confirm the disappointing truth about the deceptive activities of the USPS Team, a team that received tens of millions of American taxpayer dollars in funding.
Referring to the widespread use of doping in cycling, USADA said the report must put an end to what they call the "EPO and blood doping era". USADA statement and dossier
Stephen Swart
New Zealand cyclist Stephen Swart has alleged that Lance Armstrong offered him $50,000 in 1993 to help fix the outcome of a series of races in the US worth $1 million in prize money. Thirteen years later, Swart gave sworn testimony about the alleged offer:
Question: What was the offer?
Swart: If my memory serves me right, I think it was $50,000, if we – like I said, we didn’t be aggressive and challenge for the rest of the race and obviously for the final race in Philadelphia …
Question: So, in effect, is it fair to say that you were offered money to not challenge Mr Armstrong, to allow him to win?
Swart: That’s correct...
Question: Did you guys agree to keep this quiet?
Swart: Yes...
Question: Why?
Swart: Well, it’s not a – it’s not ethical if you look at it in the sporting arena, is it?
Lance Armstrong has denied making any such offer.
Armstrong went on to win the 1993 Thrift Drug Triple Crown of Cycling - comprising three races: the Thrift Drug Classic in Pittsburgh, the K-Mart Classic of West Virginia and the CoreStates Championship in Philadelphia - and with it the million dollar reward.
Betsy Andreu
Betsy Andreu and her fiancé at the time, Frankie, were close friends with Lance Armstrong during the 1990s, and Frankie rode with Armstrong on his team.
Ms Andreu says she was in a room with Armstrong at Indiana University Hospital, where he was being treated for cancer in 1996, when she said Armstrong made a startling admission:
"...the doctor started asking Lance a couple of banal questions, and then boom, have you ever used any performance enhancing drugs? Lance, hanging onto his IV, rattled off EPO, testosterone, cortisone, growth hormone and steroids. My eyes popped out of my head and Frankie said 'I think we should leave the room'..."
Frankie Andreu corroborated Betsy’s account of what occurred, but Armstrong denied the exchange with his doctors had taken place. In his deposition when asked what might have been Betsy's motive, Armstrong replied:
Armstrong: Well, she said in her deposition she hates me…
Question: Is it your testimony that Mr Andreu was also lying when he said that he heard you say those things regarding your prior use?
Armstrong: 100 per cent. But I feel for him.
Question: What do you mean by that?
Armstrong: Well, I think he's trying to back up his old lady…
But in her interview with Four Corners Ms Andreu remains undeterred:
Question: Are you absolutely certain that he said that?
Betsy Andreu: Indubitably. My story, unlike Lance's, has never, ever changed.
Emma O'Reilly
Emma O'Reilly was a US Postal Service Team soigneur and Armstrong's personal masseuse in 1998 and 1999.
It was during a post-race massage that she says she overheard an urgent discussion took place between Armstrong and his management team about how to handle a positive test for cortisone.
In her deposition Ms O'Reilly said a decision was taken to issue a prescription to Armstrong for cortisone cream for saddle sores - and backdate it.
Armstrong responded aggressively to her evidence, and in his own deposition suggested she had invented the story because she bore a grudge against the team director Johan Bruyneel, with whom she had a falling out:
"[She was] pissed. Pissed at me, pissed at Johan. Really pissed at Johan. Pissed at the team. Afraid that we were going to out her as a… as a whore, or whatever. I don't know."
In her interview with Four Corners Ms O'Reilly explained her motivation:
"All I did was tell the truth and it was actually never about Lance, it was about drugs and cycling."
Armstrong later sued Ms O'Reilly for a million Euros – a lawsuit which he later dropped.
Joerg Jaksche
Joerg Jaksche is a German cyclist who began his professional career in 1997. He later admitted to EPO doping during his very first Tour de Suisse in the same year.
"The team manager, one day he took me by his side like a father... and said 'listen, I have to explain you why ... you are permanently dropped, and this is the solution. Um so if you want to do it, we can do it. Everyone in our team does it'."
"So I was confronted with the situation that there is organised doping in cycling."
In the mid-2000s Jaksche says he began blood doping, along with the American cyclist Tyler Hamilton, under Spanish doctor Eufemiano Fuentes.
In 2006 Spanish police conducted a raid against Dr Fuentes and found blood bags, drugs and paperwork implicating Jaksche, Hamilton and others.
Jaksche was suspended by his team and decided to confess.
Question: In the end why did you decide to come clean?
Jaksche: ... I didn’t like the hypocrisy in the sport....the Operación Puerto, which was this Spanish drug operation, in which I was implicated also and in which a lot of riders were implicated, they kind of showed me the real face of people running the cycling system.
And the same people that first brought me to Fuentes or asked me to do EPO doping or use other performance-enhancing drugs, they were the same people that suddenly started a movement for the credible cycling and were pointing the finger at us riders.
Jaksche later gave detailed evidence to the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) implicating team officials and doctors in systematic doping.
Phil Anderson
During the 1980s and early 1990s, Phil Anderson was Australia’s best-known professional cyclist, and was the first non-European rider ever to wear the coveted yellow jersey.
During the 1990s he mentored a young Lance Armstrong, who was making his debut on the professional circuit as a member of the Motorola team.
Anderson says he never saw Armstrong use or even discuss performance-enhancing drugs:
"You know for me ... he'll always be the champion that won seven tours... I can only name half of the riders that got second during those tours."
In his sworn deposition, New Zealand cyclist Stephen Swart claimed that Phil Anderson was present when Lance Armstrong offered him $50,000 to fix the outcome of a race.
Anderson told Four Corners he has no memory of any such meeting taking place.
NB: Sworn depositions (2005-2006) are taken from a case brought by Lance Armstrong against an insurer (SCA Promotions) based in Dallas, Texas. The insurer guaranteed huge bonuses to Armstrong for winning the Tour de France in successive years, but refused to pay Armstrong after his sixth Tour de France victory in 2004, when doping allegations began to emerge.
Watch the Four Corners report The World According to Lance