Tour de France winner Bradley
Wiggins believes Lance Armstrong
may never confess to doping because
he is "stubborn" and has "too much
to lose".
Wiggins said Armstrong should come
clean to prevent further damage to
cycling's tarnished image.
Armstrong has been stripped of seven
Tour de France titles and banned for life
for doping offences.
Wiggins said: "You realise as you grow
up that Father Christmas doesn't exist.
That was always the case with Lance."
A United States Anti-Doping Agency
(Usada) report called the American a
"serial" cheat who led "the most
sophisticated, professionalised and
successful doping programme that
sport has ever seen".
Armstrong has kept quiet since Usada's
report was published earlier this
month.
Asked whether Armstrong should
confess, Wiggins told BBC Sport: "I think
so yeah, yeah, definitely.
"But everyone knows he's a stubborn
man. He has too much to lose, but the
evidence speaks for itself. [It] looks
overwhelming.
"There's a lot of anger. It's a shame
cycling has being dragged through this
again. It had to come out.
"Us riders here now - and I think I speak
for all of us - we're the ones picking the
pieces up and having to convince
people the sport has changed.
"It's difficult to convince people
because of the precedent that's been
set and I haven't got the answer, other
than to do what I'm doing."
Wiggins's fellow Briton Mark Cavendish
described revelations about Armstrong
as "frustrating", but insisted cycling is
one of the cleanest sports.
"If you've done something, confess," he
said. "That anyone can damage the
sport I love right now, it's frustrating."
Despite evidence of widespread
systematic doping in the past,
Cavendish maintains that cycling only
appears to have more dopers because
the testing is much more stringent than
in other sports and insisted there are
cheats in "every walk of life".
He told BBC Sport's Matt Slater: "There
are cheats in entertainment, journalists
cheat, every single sport has cheats.
"If you put the effort into catching them
and you have a structure that does
things properly, you're going to catch a
cheat.
"It doesn't happen in other sports, not
because they are clean, but because it's
not got the structure cycling has. In my
eyes, cycling is the cleanest sport."
Cavendish said he respected those such
as Great Britain team-mate David Millar
who have openly discussed their
doping and therefore played a part in
trying to clean up the sport.
"I've worked with David Millar,"
Cavendish said. "This guy's remorseful.
He's repented."
He also praised others, including his
former HTC-Highroad team manager
Rolf Aldag, who admitted to doping
during his time as a rider.
"These guys care about the sport," he
said. "They ruin their reputation to
move the sport on, but other people
care more about themselves."
In his candid interview with BBC Sport,
Cavendish also said he felt let down by
Team Sky, arguing he was misled by the
British-based team into believing they
would compete for the green jersey -
awarded to the rider with the most
points, usually won by sprinters - in
tours.
The Manx sprinter, 27, said he joined
Team Sky in 2011 believing he would be
able to battle it out for the green jersey
in the Tour de France points
competition, but ended up taking a
back seat as team-mate Wiggins
secured overall victory and the yellow
jersey.
"I wouldn't have gone to Sky in the first
place if they had said you're not going
to win the green next year," Cavendish
said.
"If I wanted to go just for green, I
wouldn't have gone to Sky anyway, but
we had this idea of yellow and green
and that it was two British riders on a
British team backed by British sponsors.
"That was a big thing for me. I'm a
patriotic lad."
Cavendish said Sky's decision not to go
for green "kind of threw what my whole
career is about into turmoil", but said
he would not rule out a return to the
Dave Brailsford-led team in the future.
"The best thing I did was go [leave
Sky]," added the 2011 world road race
champion, who will ride for Omega
Pharma-QuickStep in 2013.
"I wanted to stay friends. I wouldn't rule
out ever going back, but that's up to
them. I had a wicked time and was part
of history."
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