The governing body of world cycling said Friday it had no evidence of doping against Lance Armstrong and was unable to express any judgment regarding recent doping allegations.
“The UCI has not to date received any official information or document” from anti-doping authorities or the laboratory reportedly involved in the testing of urine samples from the 1999 Tour de France, the UCI said.
Allegations that EPO was found in Armstrong’s 1999 urine samples were first reported by the French sports daily L’Equipe last month.
Armstrong, who has won the Tour a record seven times, has angrily denied the charges and questioned the validity of testing samples frozen six years ago, how those samples were handled since, and how he could be expected to defend himself when the only confirming evidence no longer exists.
UCI said it was still gathering information and had asked the World Anti-Doping Agency and the French laboratory for more background. Most importantly, it wanted to know who commissioned the research and who agreed to make it public.
“We have substantial concerns about the impact of this matter on the integrity of the overall drug testing regime of the Olympic movement, and in particular the questions it raises over the trustworthiness of some of the sports and political authorities active in the anti-doping fight,” the UCI said.
UCI president Hein Verbruggen has demanded more severe sanctions for dopers and suggested Armstrong should face sanctions if doping was proved. He also told Friday’s Le Figaro that Armstrong had proposed before the Tour that all of his urine samples be kept for tests over the next 10 years.
Damn, I hope this doesn’t stop his anger driven motivation for wanting to go back and do the race again. I was really hoping he would go back and escort another rider on team Disco to the victory. Also, I know its mostly the media in France that hates Armstrong and not really the people of France, but was kinda looking forward to Armstrong squashing any Frenchman that tried to break away during any of the 2006 stages.
this perhaps may help put the thing in the proper perspective. cycling, and the IOC, and WADA, and the WADA accredited lab, and the french federation, all agreed to a protocol. this is the one inking of a signal that any of these organizations respects this protocol, and by extension honors the athletes this protocol serves.
dick pound should resign his post or, if he wants to keep his post, he should apologize. the french lab that leaked the information should be put on provisional suspension, as should the french cyclnig federation.
hein verbruggen better keep up the pressure. his credibility is at stake. further, if i’m an athlete, i must face the fact that processes designed to preserve any of my rights mean nothing to WADA and the IOC. WADA’s credibility is already in the toilet, as is that of the IOC, and it’ll take some big back-pedaling to regain that credibility.
if i understand this right, the lab had numbers, but no names. it took the french fed to match the lab’s #s with the names. so, it took somebody in the french fed, in conjunction with somebody in the lab, to put it all together. i suspect each party knew what the other was doing, and they leaked it in concert.
and, this was a french test. the test “belongs” to the french fed, unless i’m mistaken. should an american (for example) test positive in the tour, and usa cycling throw the positive out, the french would have the right to appeal usa cycling’s decision to CAS, in defense of their test.
so unless i am mistaken, the french fed has their hands all over this.
so they should do what? test the guys ranked 500th in the UCI rankings?
what’s the big deal with him being 6 times winner at the start of the tour 2005 being tested? it’s the same deal every year…
they never called it a random test. the US media said it was random.
Before the start of the Tour most of the top contenders are tested. Jan Ullrich was tested too but I didn’t hear whine about being tested as he knew he would be…
Hey, if you’re calling Cyclingnews and Reuters part of the US media conspiracy then go ahead. I haven’t seen any retractions to the story, maybe I missed it.
Where did the issue of tests being administered as “random” come from? I thought that slowman’s contention was that once the B samples were basically donated to be science experiments, it took cooperation someone from within the French Fed to match the athlete’s name back to the samples that were being experimented on.
“the French cycling fed has nothing to do with the testing and who gets tested.”
that’s not how testing works, as i understand it. the test is commissioned under whatever testing protocol the french fed uses. it is the arbiter of this. it’s their test. they own the test. now, they may not PAY for the test, because they may give the process over to the french version of USADA (this is the case now with the USOC’s federations), but it’s still the french fed’s test.
my understanding is that the FRENCH federation is in possession of the numbers that accompany the samples. the lab only gets the samples with numbers attached, no names. the ONLY way a positive test is attached to a name is that somebody has possession of BOTH the numbers AND the names that associate with those numbers.
what i believe is the case is that the french fed is the organization that has this information. the lab does not have this, and i don’t believe WADA has it either. nor to i believe the UCI has it, nor the french olympic committee. it’s the french cycling fed’s property.
you seem fairly sure i’m wrong about this. so, if i’m wrong, tell me what’s REALLY going on, and how i’ve misrepresented the facts.
they never called it a random test. the US media said it was random.
Before the start of the Tour most of the top contenders are tested. Jan Ullrich was tested too but I didn’t hear whine about being tested as he knew he would be…
Lance was the only one tested the day before this years race.