Lance Armstrong calmly told Oprah Winfrey in a highly anticipated taped television interview Thursday night that he took a variety of performance-enhancing drugs while winning a record seven Tour de France titles, but that in his mind at the time, he didn’t consider it cheating.

At the start of a stunning question-and-answer exchange, the disgraced rider responded to a series of yes-or-no questions, answering affirmatively when asked whether he had taken specific drugs during a period when he was one of the most celebrated athletes in the world.

“The definition of cheating is to gain an advantage on a foe," Armstrong later said, saying that the use of performance-enhancing drugs was part the culture of top-level cycling. “I viewed it as a level playing field.”

PHOTOS: Lance Armstrong through the years

“But you’re Lance Armstrong,” Winfrey said.

“I know, but hindsight is 20/20,” he said. “I didn’t know what I had.”

Peop...

Lance Armstrong said in his interview broadcast Thursday night with Oprah Winfrey that he did not do anything to try to influence the U.S. Atty.’s office in Los Angeles to drop its grand-jury probe of him last February.

“No, none, that’s very difficult to influence,” he said.

Asked if he thought he had achieved victory from the scrutiny of doping allegations when no charges were filed, he said, “I thought I was out of the woods.”

PHOTOS: Lance Armstrong through the years

Armstrong told Winfrey he’s convinced he could have avoided this scenario if he had remained retired after the seventh Tour win. He said his comeback “didn’t sit well with” former teammate Floyd Landis.

“That period began this,” he said.

Regret coming back? Winfrey asked.

“I do,” he said. “We wouldn’t be sitting here if I hadn’t come back.”

Asked if he always feared this day of reckoning would come, Armstrong...

Zenyatta's half-sister, Eblouissante, was set to run in her second race, a 1 1/16-mile test on the dirt, and fans of the 2010 Horse of the Year wanted to see her half-sister up close.

Eblouissante didn't disappoint, improving her race record to 2-0 after 1 3/4-length triumph over second-place Pink Blossom under jockey Corey Nakatani.

John Shirreffs, who trained Zenyatta, also trains Eblouissante, a 4-year-old by Bernardini out of Zenyatta's dam, Vertigineux.

"Zenyatta had so many great fans and a lot of them have grown fond of Eblouissante, so it's great," Shirreffs said. "I saw a bunch of the ladies I saw during Zenyatta's days supporting Eblouissante. It's great to have fans out here supporting horses."

Said Nakatani: "She's such a big filly. She may look like she breaks slow,...

Lance Armstrong’s interview with Oprah Winfrey, in which he is expected to deliver a confession to using performance-enhancing methods to win the Tour de France seven times, is less than two hours away.

Armstrong, 41, sat down with Winfrey for 2 1/2 hours at a hotel near his home in Austin, Texas, on Monday, and Winfrey said she was “satisfied” with Armstrong’s responses to questions she said were exhaustively researched.

The interview will air on the Oprah Winfrey Network at 9 p.m. Eastern time, and can be seen at 6 p.m. Pacific on some satellite providers and streamed on Oprah.com

PHOTOS: Lance Armstrong through the years

Armstrong has fiercely denied using performance-enhancing drugs like testosterone and the energy boosting substance EPO for more than a decade, citing hundreds of clean test results.

Yet, in 1996, a former teammate Frankie Andreu and his wife, Betsy, say they heard Armstrong confess to using performance-enhancing drugs in a conversation with...

Kobe Bryant received 1.59 million votes, the most of any player in the fan balloting, as the Laker star was chosen to his 15th NBA All-Star team. His Lakers teammate Dwight Howard was also selected as a starter for the West squad. This is Howard’s seventh All-Star selection.

Clippers Chris Paul (sixth All-Star team) and Blake Griffin (third All-Star selection) will also start for the West. Oklahoma City Thunder star Kevin Durant will complete the starting five for the West.

This year the "center" position was dropped from All-Star ballots. Instead, fans voted for two backcourt and three frontcourt players.

The starters for the Eastern Conference All-Stars are: Dwyane Wade (Miami) and Rajon Rondo (Boston) in the backcourt, and LeBron James (Miami), Carmelo Anthony (New York) and Kevin Garnett (Boston) in the frontcourt.

Reserves for the All-Star teams will be selected by NBA...

Two UCLA players were among the Top 20 picks in Major League Soccer’s two-round SuperDraft on Thursday: Bruin midfielder Fernando Monge is going to the Montreal Impact with the second-to-last pick of the first round, while midfielder Ryan Hollingshead went to FC Dallas with the first pick of the second round.

Cal State Bakersfield defender Kory Kindle was the 25th player taken overall, going to the Colorado Rapids.

Monge, an all-conference selection from Seattle, was second on the team in minutes played this season, starting all 19 of UCLA’s games, scoring five times and adding an assist.

Hollingshead, the Pac-12 Player of the Year as well as a conference all-academic honoree, also started 19 times, scoring a team-high seven times and registering eight assists for the Bruins, who went 13-3-3.

Kindle, from Ventura, also won all-conference and all-academic honors at Bakersfield, where he scored six goals in 16 games.

Louisville defender Andrew Farrell was the No. 1 overall...

The Galaxy added depth at three positions in Thursday’s Major League Soccer SuperDraft, choosing a forward, a midfielder and a defender with its three picks.

With the final pick in the first round, the two-time defending MLS champions took Boston College forward Charlie Rugg.

In the second round of the two-round SuperDraft, the Galaxy took defender Kofi Opare from the University of Michigan and midfielder Greg Cochrane from Louisville.

“They do kind of fit some needs and balance out our roster,” Galaxy General Manager and Coach Bruce Arena said. “They’re all promising young players.”

Rugg, 22,  was a three-time All-ACC selection at Boston College, scoring 28 goals and adding 18 assists in 76 games to help his team qualify for the NCAA Tournament during all four years of his college career.

Opare, 22, was born and raised in Niagara Falls, Canada, holds Canadian and U.S. citizenship and has represented the United States at the under-20 level. A four-...

With the second pick in Thursday’s Major League Soccer SuperDraft in Indianapolis, Chivas USA made good on its pledge to pick a Mexican American player by selecting midfielder Carlos Alvarez, a former Salesian High School star from East Los Angeles and the University of Connecticut.

The New England Revolution, which traded up to get the first pick, used that selection on the University of Louisville's Andrew Farrell, a defender considered by many to be the best player available.

&...

A report on the investigation into the NBA players' union's business activities showed that Billy Hunter, its executive director, did nothing illegal but his actions might not have been in the best interests of the players.

An eight-month review, which was released Thursday by the firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, discovered that Hunter "acted in a manner inconsistent with his fiduciary obligations to the NBPA. As a result, at times he entangled the union in actual or potential conflicts of interest, failed adequately to disclose those conflicts and took inappropriate advantage of his position as executive director."

The biggest concerns included Hunter's new $3-million annual salary, which was not properly approved by the union in 2010.

The report, which came about in part by NBPA President Derek Fisher's insistence in April 2012 to review business practices, called into question whether Hunter should remain as executive director of the players' association.

"Based on the...

Former NFL quarterback Ryan Leaf has been moved from a drug treatment center to the state prison in Deer Lodge, Mont., after being kicked out of the center for poor behavior.

"The Montana Department of Corrections terminated Leaf from the treatment program and placed him in prison after he was found guilty of behavior that violated conditions of his drug treatment placement," Dawn Handa, regional probation and parole administrator in Great Falls, said in a statement. "The violations included threatening a program staff member."

Leaf was charged last year with breaking into two houses and stealing prescription painkillers. He pleaded guilty to burglary and criminal possession of dangerous drugs and was sentenced in June to five years with the Department of Corrections, with the recommendation that he spend the first nine months in a locked drug treatment facility.

Leaf also faces the revocation of a 10-year probationary sentence for a 2010 drug and burglary conviction in Texas.

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Muhammad Ali, the self-proclaimed greatest boxer of all time and arguably the greatest sportsman in history, turned 71 today.

Ali, who was born Cassius Clay in Louisville, Ky., is legendary for his exploits not only inside the ring but outside it as well. He was a brash talker who could back it up in the ring (see tribute video from 2012 above as well as the photo gallery).

He won a gold medal in the 1960 Rome Olympics and converted to Islam in 1964, when he changed his name. He gained further international fame when he refused to fight in the Vietnam War because of his religious beliefs while wearing the crown as the heavyweight champion of the world.

Ali was eventually arrested and stripped of the heavyweight title in 1967, but the U.S. Supreme Court cleared him of the draft-evasion conviction in 1971. He served no jail time but was unable to box for more than three years.

"You know, my father loves people and people love my father, and I learned that at a very young age, as people...