US anti-doping officials won’t hand over Armstrong case
Lance Armstrong. AP
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado — US anti-doping officials have rejected a request by the Switzerland-based governing group for cycling to hand over materials from their Lance Armstrong doping probe.
The US Anti-Doping Agency said in a letter to the International Cycling Union, commonly known by its French initials UCI, that turning over their two-year doping case to the UCI would be like “the fox guarding the henhouse”.
UCI is claiming jurisdiction over the case, according to documents filed Friday in a Texas court.
“The USPS doping conspiracy was going on under the watch of UCI, so of course UCI and the participants in the conspiracy who cheated sport with dangerous performance enhancing drugs to win have a strong incentive to cover up what transpired,” USADA chief executive Travis Tygart said Friday.
“The participants in the conspiracy have lashed out in the press, gone to Congress and filed a lawsuit to avoid a public display of the evidence before neutral judges.”
“Efforts to intimidate, scare or pressure us to conceal the truth will not stop us from doing the job we are mandated to do on behalf of clean athletes and the integrity of all sport.”
USADA announced in June that it had brought charges against Armstrong for doping, which if proven could see the American cyclist stripped of his seven Tour de France titles.
USADA claims it has witnesses who will show that Armstrong and five former cycling team associates engaged in a doping conspiracy from 1998-2011.
Armstrong, who has vigorously denied doping, has sued USADA in federal court, stating that the agency’s process violates his US constitutional rights, and he claims that the organization has no jurisdiction in the case.
“The participants of the USPS doping conspiracy made their decisions to use dangerous banned drugs to win and our job is to apply the rules whether someone is famous or anonymous and we will do that on behalf of the millions of people who demand clean sport despite these external pressures,” Tygart said.
USADA also demanded in a letter to the UCI that it set up a “Truth And Reconciliation Commission to clean up the sport of cycling once and for all.”
USADA lawyer Bill Bock cited a 2007 report on drug use in American baseball by former Senate majority leader George Mitchell, which claimed the sport was unable to police itself.
Bock wrote “the evidence is even stronger that cycling under the management of the UCI has been enmeshed in its own EPO and blood doping era.”
UCI has denied claims that its officials covered up positive drug tests.
“The UCI wants that the whole case file, with all the evidence, is assessed by an independent panel who shall then decide if the respondents have a case to answer,” UCI head Pat McQuaid wrote in a letter to USADA.
Bock wrote they have done their homework and between 1999-2005, just two of the podium finishers at the Tour de France have not been associated with a doping case. One of those is Armstrong.
“By our count, of the 21 podium finishers at the Tour de France during the period from 1999-2005, only a single rider other than Mr. Armstrong was not implicated in doping by a subsequent investigation. Yet, only a single one of these riders had a positive test with the UCI.”
