UCI agrees to strip Armstrong of his 7 Tour titles

GENEVA (AP) 10.22.12 — Lance Armstrong’s name is com­ing out of cycling’s record books.

Arm­strong was stripped of his seven Tour de France titles and banned for life by cycling’s gov­ern­ing body Mon­day fol­low­ing a report from the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency that accused him of lead­ing a mas­sive dop­ing pro­gram on his teams.

UCI Pres­i­dent Pat McQuaid announced that the fed­er­a­tion accepted the USADA’s report on Arm­strong and would not appeal to the Court of Arbi­tra­tion for Sport.

In Paris, Tour direc­tor Chris­t­ian Prud­homme said at a news con­fer­ence he no longer con­sid­ers Arm­strong the seven-time cham­pion of the race. Prud­homme called UCI’s deci­sion “totally log­i­cal” and said “Lance Arm­strong is no longer the win­ner of the Tour de France from 1999–2005.”

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for fur­ther infor­ma­tion. AP’s ear­lier story is below.

Lance Arm­strong was stripped of his seven Tour de France titles and banned for life by cycling’s gov­ern­ing body Mon­day fol­low­ing a report from the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency that accused him of lead­ing a mas­sive dop­ing pro­gram on his teams.

UCI Pres­i­dent Pat McQuaid announced that the fed­er­a­tion accepted the USADA’s report on Arm­strong and would not appeal to the Court of Arbi­tra­tion for Sport.

“Lance Arm­strong has no place in cycling and he deserves to be for­got­ten in cycling,” McQuaid said at a news con­fer­ence. “This is a land­mark day for cycling.”

The deci­sion clears the way for Tour de France orga­niz­ers to offi­cially remove Armstrong’s name from the record books, eras­ing his con­sec­u­tive vic­to­ries from 1999–2005.

Tour direc­tor Chris­t­ian Prud­homme has said the race would go along with what­ever cycling’s gov­ern­ing body decides and will have no offi­cial win­ners for those years.

Armstrong’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives had no imme­di­ate comment.

USADA said Arm­strong should be banned and stripped of his Tour titles for “the most sophis­ti­cated, pro­fes­sion­al­ized and suc­cess­ful dop­ing pro­gram that sport has ever seen” within his U.S. Postal Ser­vice and Dis­cov­ery Chan­nel teams. Under the penal­ties, he loses all his race results since August 1998.

The USADA report said Arm­strong and his teams used steroids, the blood booster EPO and blood trans­fu­sions. The report included state­ments from 11 for­mer team­mates who tes­ti­fied against Arm­strong, includ­ing tes­ti­mony that he pres­sured them to take banned drugs.

“I was sick­ened by what I read in the USADA report,” McQuaid said, sin­gling out the tes­ti­mony of for­mer Arm­strong team­mate David Zabriskie. “The story he told of how he was coerced and to some extent forced into dop­ing is just mind boggling.”

Arm­strong denies dop­ing, say­ing he passed hun­dreds of drug tests. But he chose not to fight USADA in one of the agency’s arbi­tra­tion hear­ings, argu­ing the process was biased against him. USADA’s report, released ear­lier this month, was aimed at show­ing why the agency ordered the sanc­tions against him.

“At the moment Lance Arm­strong hasn’t admit­ted to any­thing, yet all the evi­dence is there in this report that he doped,” McQuaid said.

For­mer Arm­strong team direc­tor Johan Bruyneel is also fac­ing dop­ing charges, but he is chal­leng­ing the USADA case in arbitration.

On Sun­day, Arm­strong greeted about 4,300 cyclists at his Live­strong charity’s fundraiser bike ride in Texas, telling the crowd he’s faced a “very dif­fi­cult” few weeks.

“I’ve been bet­ter, but I’ve also been worse,” Arm­strong, a can­cer sur­vivor, told the crowd.

While drug use alle­ga­tions have fol­lowed the 41-year-old Arm­strong through­out much of his career, the USADA report seems to have marked a turn­ing point in the saga. Long­time spon­sors Nike, Trek Bicy­cles and Anheuser-Busch dropped Arm­strong last week, as did other com­pa­nies, and he stepped down as chair­man of Live­strong, the can­cer aware­ness char­ity he founded 15 years ago after sur­viv­ing tes­tic­u­lar can­cer which spread to his lungs and brain.

Armstrong’s aston­ish­ing return from life-threatening ill­ness to the sum­mit of cycling offered an inspi­ra­tional story that tran­scended the sport. How­ever, his down­fall has ended “one of the most sor­did chap­ters in sports his­tory,” USADA said in its 200-page report pub­lished two weeks ago.

Arm­strong has con­sis­tently argued that the USADA sys­tem was rigged against him, call­ing the agency’s effort a “witch hunt” which pres­sured wit­nesses into cooperating.

“It is for Mr. Arm­strong to defend him­self against such wit­ness state­ments that he deems to be incor­rect. It is not for the UCI to do so,” the gov­ern­ing body said in a statement.

If Armstrong’s Tour vic­to­ries are not reas­signed there would be a hole in the record books, mark­ing a shift from how orga­niz­ers treated sim­i­lar cases in the past.

When Alberto Con­ta­dor was stripped of his 2010 Tour vic­tory for a dop­ing vio­la­tion, orga­niz­ers awarded the title to Andy Schleck. In 2006, Oscar Pereiro was awarded the vic­tory after the dop­ing dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion of Amer­i­can rider Floyd Landis.

USADA’s posi­tion is that the Tour titles should not be given to other rid­ers who fin­ished on the podium, such was the level of dop­ing dur­ing Armstrong’s era.

The agency said 20 of the 21 rid­ers on the podium in the Tour from 1999 through 2005 have been “directly tied to likely dop­ing through admis­sions, sanc­tions, pub­lic inves­ti­ga­tions” or other means. It added that of the 45 rid­ers on the podium between 1996 and 2010, 36 were by cyclists “sim­i­larly tainted by doping.”

The world’s most famous cyclist could still face fur­ther sports sanc­tions and legal chal­lenges. Arm­strong could lose his 2000 Olympic time-trial bronze medal and may be tar­geted with civil law­suits from ex-sponsors or even the U.S. government.

McQuaid said the UCI’s board will meet Fri­day to dis­cuss the Olympic issue and whether to update other race results tak­ing account of Armstrong’s disqualifications.

A so-called “Truth and Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion” com­mis­sion, which could offer a lim­ited amnesty to rid­ers and offi­cials who con­fessed to dop­ing prac­tices, will also be dis­cussed, UCI legal adviser Philippe Ver­biest said.

In total, 26 peo­ple — includ­ing 15 rid­ers — tes­ti­fied to USADA that Arm­strong and his teams used and traf­ficked banned sub­stances and rou­tinely used blood trans­fu­sions. Among the wit­nesses were loyal side­kick George Hin­capie and admit­ted dop­ers Tyler Hamil­ton and Landis.

USADA’s case also impli­cated Ital­ian sports doc­tor Michele Fer­rari, depicted as the archi­tect of dop­ing pro­grams, and long­time coach and team man­ager Bruyneel.

Fer­rari — who has been tar­geted in an Ital­ian prosecutor’s probe — and another med­ical offi­cial, Dr. Luis Gar­cia del Moral, received life­time bans.

Bruyneel, team doc­tor Pedro Celaya and trainer Jose “Pepe” Marti opted to take their cases to arbi­tra­tion with USADA. The agency could call Arm­strong as a wit­ness at those hearings.

Bruyneel, a Bel­gian for­mer Tour de France rider, lost his job last week as man­ager of the RadioShack-Nissan Trek team which Arm­strong helped found to ride for in the 2010 season.

Posted by Randa Wagner on Oct 22 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.