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The United States Anti-Doping Agency has banned him for life and stripped him of his seven Tour de France titles.

Armstrong report key claims:

• Achievements of USPS/Discovery Channel pro cycling team accomplished through the most sophisticated, professional and successful doping programme that sport has ever seen

• Armstrong's career at the team was fuelled from start to finish by doping

• More than a dozen former team-mates, friends and former team employees confirm a fraudulent course of conduct

• Armstrong acted with the help of a small army of enablers, including doping doctors, drug smugglers and others within and outside the sport and his team

• He had ultimate control over not only his own personal drug use but over the doping culture of the team

• Team staff were good at predicting when testers would turn up and seemed to have inside information

• Evidence is beyond strong and as strong as any case brought by Usada in its existence

"It is understandable now for people to look at any results in cycling and question that," said Brailsford.

"It completely and utterly lost its way and I think it lost its moral compass."

Brailsford said he was staggered by the extent of the systemic doping revealed by the United States Anti-Doping Agency (Usada).

"It is shocking, it's jaw dropping and it is very unpleasant," he told BBC Radio 5 live. "It's not very palatable and anybody who says it is would be lying wouldn't they?"

He also criticised Armstrong.

"I think there are plenty of people out there who saw this guy and what he did as an amazing achievement," said Brailsford.

"He is one of the first cyclists that maybe transcended the sport and became a hero beyond cycling.

"It was an amazing thing and people got behind that. So to now find out what was behind [it] is, of course, disappointing."

Brailsford insisted cycling is trying to right the wrongs of the past and said his own outfit, Team Sky, was leading the fightback.

This year's Tour de France was won by a Team Sky rider, Britain's Bradley Wiggins.

"Everybody has recalibrated and several teams like ourselves are hell-bent on doing it the right way and doing it clean," said Brailsford.

But one of the 11 of Armstrong's former team-mates who testified against him was Michael Barry, who admitted to doping while a member of Armstrong's US Postal Service Pro Cycling (USPS) team between 2002 and 2006, and who rode under Brailsford for Team Sky from 2010.

In a statement issued on Wednesday, the Canadian insisted he had not doped again from the summer of 2006.

"We signed Michael from HTC which was, at the time, highly regarded as being a very sound, clean team," said Brailsford.

"During his time at Team Sky, we have had absolutely no cause for concern whatsoever, there has never been any question in terms of his performances, his training, his behaviour on the team. There have never been any issues in that respect. But ultimately he lied.

Oil giant Shell is due to appear in court in the Netherlands to face charges of polluting Nigerian villages.

The case is being brought by four Nigerian farmers and the Dutch branch of campaigners Friends of the Earth.

It is the first time a Dutch multinational is being put on trial in a civil court at home in connection with damage caused abroad.

The Anglo-Dutch firm insists that it has been unable to clean up the spills due to insecurity in the region.

It also says that more than half of the leaks are caused by theft and sabotage.

The case is linked to spills in the Ogoniland region of Nigeria.

The farmers say that oil spills from the oil firm's pipelines have destroyed their livelihoods by damaging crops and fish-farms.

One of the plaintiffs, Friday Alfred Akpan from the village of Ikot Ada Udo, told the BBC the oil leaks in his village had badly damaged his 47 fish ponds.

"Fish died as a result of the oil spill, making it difficult for me to live and put my children through school."

He told the BBC's Newsday programme he wanted compensation for the loss, and for Shell to clean up the spill.

If the farmers' case is successful it could set a legal precedent, paving the way for thousands of other compensation claims from those affected by oil spills, says the BBC's Anna Holligan in The Hague.

Last year, a report by the United Nations Environment Programmesaid that over half a century of oil operation in the region, by firms including Shell, had caused deeper damage to the Ogoniland area of the Niger Delta than earlier estimated.

In August, the company accepted responsibility for two specific spills in the region in 2008 and 2009, saying it would settle the case under Nigerian law.