Home Tags Posts tagged with "international cycling union"
international cycling union
Former cyclist Lance Armstrong has said he will not agree to be interviewed under oath by the United States Anti Doping Agency (USADA).
Lance Armstrong, 41, admitted taking performance-enhancing drugs during his seven of his Tour de France wins in an interview with Oprah Winfrey.
By speaking to USADA, Lance Armstrong would have been eligible to have a lifetime ban overturned.
But a statement said the former cyclist “will not participate in prosecutions… that only demonize selected individuals”.
Lance Armstrong was initially given until February 6 to meet USADA officials but was allowed a further two weeks to decide whether to be interviewed.
His statement, released by his attorney Tim Herman, said he is willing to help with the investigation but will not be interviewed by USADA.
It added: “Lance is willing to cooperate fully and has been very clear: He will be the first man through the door, and once inside will answer every question, at an international tribunal formed to comprehensively address pro cycling, an almost exclusively European sport.
“We remain hopeful that an international effort will be mounted, and we will do everything we can to facilitate that result.
“In the meantime, for several reasons, Lance will not participate in USADA’s efforts to selectively conduct American prosecutions that only demonize selected individuals while failing to address the 95% of the sport over which USADA has no jurisdiction.”
Lance Armstrong has said he will not agree to be interviewed under oath by the USADA
Lance Armstrong was charged by USADA in June 2012 with using performance-enhancing drugs.
He filed a lawsuit against the organisation the following month, accusing them of “corrupt inducements” to other cyclists to testify against him.
However, Lance Armstrong then announced in August that he would not fight the doping charges filed against him, and was given a life ban by USADA and stripped of his Tour de France titles.
The findings were accepted by the International Cycling Union.
Lance Armstrong, who retired from cycling in 2005 but returned to the sport between 2009 and 2012, has called for a ‘truth and reconciliation commission’ overseen by the World Anti-Doping Agency to look into the issue of doping in the sport.
US rider Lance Armstrong’s seven Tour de France titles will not be awarded to anyone else, the International Cycling Union has announced.
Lance Armstrong was stripped of his yellow jerseys by cycling’s governing body for doping on Monday.
“The management committee decided not to award victories to any other rider or upgrade other placings in any of the affected events,” said a UCI statement.
Lance Armstrong crossed the line first every year between 1999 and 2005.
The UCI has also ordered Lance Armstrong to pay back all his prize money from this period.
The statement added: “The committee decided to apply this ruling from now on to any competitive sporting results disqualified due to doping for the period from 1998 to 2005, without prejudice to the statute of limitation.
“The committee also called on Armstrong and all other affected riders to return the prize money they had received.”
Lance Armstrong’s seven Tour de France titles will not be awarded to anyone else, the UCI has announced
On Monday, the UCI ratified the decision of the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) to strip Lance Armstrong of his seven Tour titles.
The UCI’s statement went on to add that there was “little honour to be gained” from reallocating the yellow jerseys from 1999 to 2005 to any other riders.
A USADA report called the American a “serial” cheat who led “the most sophisticated, professionalised and successful doping programme that sport has ever seen”.
Lance Armstrong has kept quiet since USADA’s report was published earlier this month.
Cyclist Lance Armstrong has been stripped of his seven Tour de France titles by the International Cycling Union.
UCI has accepted the findings of the United States Anti-Doping Agency’s (USADA) investigation into Armstrong.
UCI president Pat McQuaid said: “Lance Armstrong has no place in cycling. He deserves to be forgotten.”
Pat McQuaid added Armstrong had been stripped of all results since 1 August, 1998 and banned for life for doping.
On what he called a “landmark day for cycling”, the Irishman, who became president of UCI in 2005, said he would not be resigning.
“This is a crisis, the biggest crisis cycling has ever faced,” he said.
“I like to look at this crisis as an opportunity for our sport and everyone involved in it to realise it is in danger and to work together to go forward.
“Cycling has a future. This is not the first time cycling has reached a crossroads or that it has had to begin anew.
“When I took over [as president] in 2005 I made the fight against doping my priority. I acknowledged cycling had a culture of doping. Cycling has come a long way. I have no intention of resigning as president of the UCI,” Pat McQuaid said.
“I’m sorry that we couldn’t catch every damn one of them red-handed and throw them out of the sport at the time.”
Lance Armstrong, 41, received a life ban from USADA for what the organisation called “the most sophisticated, professionalised and successful doping programme that sport has ever seen”.
The American, who overcame cancer to return to professional cycling, won the Tour de France in seven successive years from 1999 to 2005.
He has always denied doping but chose not to fight the charges filed against him.
USADA released a 1,000-page report earlier this month which included sworn testimony from 26 people, including 15 riders with knowledge of the US Postal Service Team and the doping activities of its members.
USADA praised the “courage” shown by the riders in coming forward and breaking the sport’s “code of silence”.
Lance Armstrong, who retired in 2005 but returned in 2009 before retiring for good two years later, has not commented on the details of USADA’s report. His lawyer Tim Herman, however, has described it as a “one-sided hatchet job”.
Pat McQuaid said he was “sickened” by what he read in the USADA report, singling out the testimony of Lance Armstrong’s former team-mate David Zabriskie.
“The story he told of how he was coerced and to some extent forced into doping is just mind-boggling,” he said.
“It is very difficult to accept and understand that that went on.
“But cycling has changed a lot since then. What was available to the UCI then was much more limited compared to what is available now. If we had then what we have now, this sort of thing would not have gone on.”
Pat McQuaid was quizzed over the $100,000 donation made by Armstrong to the UCI in 2002, one year after the American cyclist had had a suspicious test for EPO at the 2001 Tour of Switzerland.
The management committee of the UCI will meet on Friday to discuss whether to reallocate Lance Armstrong’s Tour de France titles and prize money.
Cyclist Lance Armstrong’s team ran “the most sophisticated, professionalised and successful doping programme the sport has ever seen” according to a report by the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA).
USADA says it will deliver the full report in the doping case against Lance Armstrong, 41, later on Wednesday.
It contains testimony from 11 of his former US Postal Service team-mates.
Lance Armstrong has always denied doping allegations but has not contested USADA’s charges.
USADA chief executive Travis T. Tygart said there was “conclusive and undeniable proof” of a team-run doping conspiracy.
The organisation will send a “reasoned decision” in the Armstrong case to the International Cycling Union (UCI), the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the World Triathlon Corporation.
The UCI now has 21 days to lodge an appeal against USADA’s decision with WADA or they must comply with the decision to strip Armstrong, who now competes in triathlons, of his seven Tour de France titles and hand him a lifetime ban.
Lance Armstrong ran the most sophisticated doping program in cycling history
Lance Armstrong, who overcame cancer to return to professional cycling, won the Tour from 1999 to 2005. He retired in 2005 but returned in 2009 before retiring for good two years later.
In his statement, Travis T. Tygart said the evidence against Lance Armstrong and his team – which is in excess of 1,000 pages – was “overwhelming” and “and includes sworn testimony from 26 people, including 15 riders with knowledge of the US Postal Service Team and its participants’ doping activities”.
Travis T. Tygart revealed it contains “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”.
He also claimed the team’s doping conspiracy “was professionally designed to groom and pressure athletes to use dangerous drugs, to evade detection, to ensure its secrecy and ultimately gain an unfair competitive advantage through superior doping practices”.
Among the former team-mates of Lance Armstrong’s to testify were George Hincapie, Tyler Hamilton and Floyd Landis, who was stripped of his 2006 Tour de France title for failing a dope test and was recently found guilty in a Swiss court of defaming the International Cycling Union for alleging they had protected Lance Armstrong from doping claims.
Travis T. Tygart said: “The riders who participated in the USPS Team doping conspiracy and truthfully assisted have been courageous in making the choice to stop perpetuating the sporting fraud, and they have suffered greatly.
“I have personally talked with and heard these athletes’ stories and firmly believe that, collectively, these athletes, if forgiven and embraced, have a chance to leave a legacy far greater for the good of the sport than anything they ever did on a bike.
“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 recognised competition for life and disqualification of his competitive results from 1998 forward.”
USADA confirmed that two other members of the US Postal Service team, Dr. Michele Ferrari and Dr. Garcia del Moral, also received lifetime bans for their part in the doping conspiracy.
Three further members, team director Johan Bruyneel, a team doctor Dr. Pedro Celaya and team trainer Jose Marti, have chosen to contest the charges and take their cases to arbitration.
Travis T. Tygart also called on the UCI to “act on its own recent suggestion for a meaningful Truth and Reconciliation programme”.
“Hopefully, the sport can unshackle itself from the past, and once and for all continue to move forward to a better future,” he added.
