UPDATE IV:
Lance Armstrong Stripped of His Seven Tour de France Titles for Doping
The International Cycling Union just announced that it will not appeal the United States Anti-Doping Agency’s ruling to bar Lance Armstrong for life from Olympic sports for doping and for playing an instrumental role in the team-wide doping on his Tour de France-winning cycling squads.
That decision to waive the right to take Armstrong’s case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, the highest court in sports, formally strips Armstrong of the seven Tour titles he won from 1999 to 2005. The Amaury Sport Organization, the company that organizes the Tour de France, will erase Armstrong’s name from its record books.
Read More Here:
UPDATE III:
Armstrong’s hometown newspaper, the Austin American-Statesman, has just reported:
Lance Armstrong stepped down as chairman of his Livestrong cancer-fighting charity and Nike severed ties with him as fallout from the doping scandal swirling around the famed cyclist escalated Wednesday.
Armstrong announced his move at the charity in an early-morning statement. Within minutes, Nike said that it would end its relationship with him “due to the seemingly insurmountable evidence that Lance Armstrong participated in doping and misled Nike for more than a decade.”
Nike said it will continue to support Livestrong.
Read more here
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UPDATE II:
Using data from the UASADA “dossier” on Lance Armstrong, the New York Times today postulates, “How Armstrong Beat Cycling’s Drug Tests” and provides selected information from the USADA report in support.
Read it here.
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UPDATE I:
Lance Armstrong’s hometown newspaper, the Austin American-Statesman, has just published an AP story that includes some reaction by Armstrong’s lawyer.
According to the Statesman, Armstrong’s attorney, Tim Herman, is calling the report “a one-sided hatchet job — a taxpayer funded tabloid piece rehashing old, disproved, unreliable allegations based largely on axe-grinders, serial perjurers, coerced testimony, sweetheart deals and threat-induced stories.”
The Statesman adds:
While the arguments about Armstrong will continue among sports fans — and there is still a question of whether USADA or the International Cycling Union (UCI) has ultimate control of taking away his Tour titles — the new report puts a cap on a long round of official investigations. Armstrong was cleared of criminal charges in February after a federal grand jury probe that lasted about two years.
The full 202-page “Report on Proceedings under the World Anti-Doping Code and the USADA Protocol” along with Appendices and Supporting Materials can be read here
Read more of the Statesman’s article here
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Original Post:
As an Austinite and an American I have always admired 7-time Tour de France winner, full time cancer fighter and survivor, father of 5 and founder and chairman of the Lance Armstrong Foundation for cancer support, Lance Edward Armstrong.
As readers know, Armstrong has for years been haunted by accusations of doping. In August, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) announced that Armstrong had received a lifetime ban and that all his cycling results since August 1998 had been disqualified.
Today, the USADA released a statement saying, “The evidence shows beyond any doubt that the US Postal Service Pro Cycling Team ran the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen.”
According to the New York Times:
The file, as described by the agency, would be the most extensive, groundbreaking layout of Armstrong’s alleged doping, bolstered by unprecedented interviews, financial statements and laboratory results.
The statement by USADA CEO Travis T. Tygart starts as follows:
Today, we are sending the ‘Reasoned Decision’ in the Lance Armstrong case and supporting information to the Union Cycliste International (UCI), the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), and the World Triathlon Corporation (WTC). The evidence shows beyond any doubt that the US Postal Service Pro Cycling Team ran the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen.
The evidence of the US Postal Service Pro Cycling Team-run scheme is overwhelming and is in excess of 1000 pages, and includes sworn testimony from 26 people, including 15 riders with knowledge of the US Postal Service Team (USPS Team) and its participants’ doping activities. The evidence also includes direct documentary evidence including financial payments, emails, scientific data and laboratory test results that further prove the use, possession and distribution of performance enhancing drugs by Lance Armstrong and confirm the disappointing truth about the deceptive activities of the USPS Team, a team that received tens of millions of American taxpayer dollars in funding.
While praising the riders on the USPS Team — including 11 teammates of Armstrong — and others who came forward and spoke “truthfully,” Tygart has this to say about Armstrong:
Lance Armstrong was given the same opportunity to come forward and be part of the solution. He rejected it.
Instead he exercised his legal right not to contest the evidence and knowingly accepted the imposition of a ban from recognized competition for life and disqualification of his competitive results from 1998 forward. The entire factual and legal basis on the outcome in his case and the other six active riders’ cases will be provided in the materials made available online later today.
Tygart adds that two other members of the USPS Team have also received lifetime bans for perpetrating the doping conspiracy and that three other members of the USPS Team have chosen to contest the charges and take their cases to arbitration.
For the entire USADA statement, please click here.
For the New York Times article, please click here.
Lance Armstrong on the Alpe D’Huez Time Trial Tour de France 2004 image via Marc Pagani Photography / Shutterstock.com “>shutterstock.com
