Tonight, a new show called 60 Minutes Sports will premier on Showtime. The first episode will feature an interview with Travis Tygart of the United States Anti-Doping Agency, who will be talking about his investigation of the Lance Armstrong doping scandal.
CBS News has leaked a few tidbits in advance of the interview, the most interesting being the allegation that Armstrong tried to bribe his way out of being investigated.
Armstrong once gave the International Cycling Union, a regulatory body for his sport, a gift of $100,000. Tygart called that "totally inappropriate." Then someone representing Armstrong tried to give USADA a large sum of money sometime in 2004. "I was stunned," he tells Pelley. "It was clear — it was a clear conflict of interest for USADA. We had no hesitation in rejecting that offer," says Tygart, who said the amount was "in excess of $150,000." Told by Pelley that "60 Minutes" had learned it was $250,000, Tygart replies, "It was around that ballpark."
That's quite the allegation, but one that should be taken with a grain of salt. Tygart has had it in for Armstrong for a very long time, and as you can see in the video clip posted by CBS, he's not shy about diving into the melodramatic. And, as Cycling News points out, there was no mention of Armstrong's attempted donation to the USADA in the organization's 1,000-page report on Armstrong's doping habits, although the $100,000 donation to the ICU did earn a mention. An attempted bribe of the USADA strikes us as something that would have been worthy of inclusion.
If you are an unhappy, soulless person who still actually cares about any of this and also happens to have Showtime, be sure to tune in for Tygart's full interview at 10:00 pm EDT.
[CBS]