Sheryl Crow and Lance Armstrong Doping: 'Truth Will Set You Free'
Sheryl Crow has offered her take on disgraced cyclist champion Lance Armstrong and his use of performance-enhancing drugs in an interview this week.
The Grammy Award-winning singer was briefly engaged to Armstrong before the pair called it off in 2006.
In a recent interview with Oprah Winfrey on OWN, Armstrong admitted that his decorated career as a cyclist was the result of "doping," or using performance-enhancing drugs, which he had long denied using.
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Armstrong's admittance has outraged fans, and the cyclist has since been stripped of his seven Tour de France titles and banned from cycling.
After hearing "bits and pieces" of Armstrong's interview with Winfrey, Crow offered her own take on the situation while speaking to "Entertainment Tonight."
"I think that honesty is always the best bet and that the truth will set you free," the 50-year-old singer told ET's Nancy O'Dell.
"To carry around a weight like that would be devastating in the long run," added Crow.
The singer began dating Armstrong in 2003, the same year he divorced his wife of five years, Kristin.
Crow's comments serve as her first public acknowledgement of Armstrong's drug use. In 2011, it was reported that the singer spoke with agents investigating the cyclist's illegal doping, and it is alleged that she was asked about any knowledge she had of Armstrong's drug use.
Crow is not the only celebrity voicing their reaction to the Armstrong doping scandal. Avid cyclist and actor Matthew McConaughey also voiced his disappointment in his former cycling associate.
"My first reaction was I was pissed off. I was mad. "I then got kind of sad for him," the "Lincoln Lawyer" star told MTV News.
"First off, I had a part of me that took it kind of personally, which I think a lot of people have," McConaughey said of Armstrong. "What I mean by this is, what was he supposed to do? Call me to the side and go, 'Hey man, I did it but don't tell anybody.' Then I would have really had a reason to be pissed off at him, going, 'You want me to walk around holding this?'"
Furthermore, Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte also admitted that the doping scandal surrounding Armstrong was "sad" ahead of the cyclist's confession.
"If Lance is innocent, it's a sad time in sports history," the swimmer told Celebuzz. "I know that it would be awful to go through that."
"Everyone should learn from this and do everything in their power to make the testing system more efficient and to educate young athletes, coaches, and parents about the dangers and consequences of doping," Lochte added at the time.
