Lance Armstrong will admit to doping when he is interviewed by Oprah Winfrey next week, according to USA Today, though the disgraced US cyclists will not provide specifics.

The interview, at Armstrong's home in Austin, Texas, is scheduled to be filmed today, with broadcast set for Thursday on the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN). The broadcast, relevant to all sport, will write a fascinating chapter in the history of doping, anti-doping, testing regimes that fail to catch big-time cheating over many a long year.

The filming will take place a day after The Sunday Times published an open letter written by chief sports writer David Walsh, a man who has been on Armstrong's case for a decade and more. 

The letter, a series of questions that Oprah could put if she wants to get from Armstrong what the wider world wants to know, starts:

Did you tell doctors at the Indiana University Hospital on Oct 27, 1996 that you had taken EPO, human growth hormone, cortisone, steroids and testosterone?

Walsh also asks Armstrong if he intends to return all prize money won from Sept 1998 to July 2010 and whether he sued The Sunday Times to "shut us up"? The needle goes deeper when Walsh asks: do you accept your lying to the cancer community was the greatest deception of all?

The Sunday Times is currently seeking recovery of $1.5m that Armstrong "got by fraud" says the paper, in reference to legal action that will now be readdressed given the truths that have since emerged.

To catch up on the paper's reporting on Armstrong, who never tested positive for a banned substance, non-subscribers can go to thesundaytimes.co.uk/lance or download the ebook "Lanced: the shaming of Lance Armstrong" at Amazon.com.

Meanwhile, sources told AP that Armstrong took the opportunity before his chance to confess to Oprah to say sorry to the staff at Livestrong, the cancer charity still running in his name.

The source spoke on condition of anonymity to The Associated Press. The cyclists is said to have addressed the staff today and said, "I'm sorry" for letting them down. The source said that the disgraced cyclist choked up, leaving some staff crying. he said that he would try to restore the foundation's reputation. It is his reputation that lies in ruins, however, not that of a cancer charity duped along with everyone else.