Lance Armstrong insisted he would never cheat yesterday — at golf.

The disgraced US cyclist — who was stripped of his seven Tour de France titles after admitting to doping throughout all of them — is a keen golfer and says the code of fair play is one of the things which most attracts him to the sport.

He said: “Golf is different from the culture of cycling when I was competing, and that’s putting it mildly. Cycling, it was the Wild West. Nobody considered doping cheating.

“It was an arms race where absolutely anything went and it was every man for himself. You might consider me the last guy to have anything to say about cheating but golf is different. I love adhering to a code of honour that we in cycling didn’t have.

“If I moved my ball in the rough and got caught, I wouldn’t just regret it, I’d be heartbroken forever. When I think about reform in cycling, I think about golf.”

Armstrong also spoke about Britain’s 2013 Tour de France winner Chris Froome saying: “(Froome) does everything wrong. He’s got a choppy pedal stroke. His arms are sticking out, his head is down, and he’s all over the bike.

“He’s the Jim Furyk of cycling, unconventional in every way. Except that it works. And the reason it works is superior cadence. His tempo is amazing. It’s paced in a way that gives his unusual mechanics time to fall together. The golf swing can be the same way.”