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UCI Accepts USADA’s Lifetime Ban for Armstrong, Strips All Seven Tour de France Titles

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The UCI has reviewed USADA’s reasoned decision and has agreed to uphold their lifetime competition ban of Lance Armstrong and strip him of all seven Tour de France titles.

Their statement acknowledges the advancement the sport has made with regards to testing procedures since Armstrong’s last Tour win, and that riders today are not only tested more often but, thankfully, aren’t subjected to the same you must dope to win culture that was apparently the norm only a decade or two ago.

The UCI also says the responsibility for the inability to obtain a positive result falls with them, WADA and anyone else who tested Armstrong and calls for investigation into the procedures used.

BikeBiz reports that UCI president Pat McQuaid will remain in his position as head of the international sanctioning body despite calls for him to step down.

Read the full press release after the break…

PRESS RELEASE: The UCI has completed its review of USADA’s ‘Reasoned Decision’ and appendices in the case against Lance Armstrong.

The UCI considered the main issues of jurisdiction, the statute of limitation the evidence gathered by USADA and the sanction imposed upon Mr. Armstrong.

The UCI confirms that it will not appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport and that it will recognise the sanction that USADA has imposed.

The USADA decision explains how riders on the USPS Team showed no inclination to share the full extent of what they knew until they were subpoenaed or called by federal investigators and that their only reason for telling the truth is because the law required them to do so.

These riders have confronted their past and told their stories. Their accounts of their past provide a shocking insight into the USPS Team where the expression to ‘win at all costs’ was redefined in terms of deceit, intimidation, coercion and evasion.

Their testimony confirms that the anti-doping infrastructure that existed at that time was, by itself, insufficient and inadequate to detect the practices taking place within the team. The UCI has always been the first international sporting federation to embrace new developments in the fight against doping and it regrets that the anti-doping infrastructure that exists today was not available at that time so as to render such evasion impossible.

Many of the USPS Team riders have already acknowledged that the culture of cycling has now changed and that young riders today are no longer confronted with the same choices to use performance enhancing drugs. They are right to do so.

The UCI has recognized the problem of doping within the sport and taken significant steps to confront the problem and to clean up cycling. Today’s riders are subject to the most innovative and effective anti-doping procedures and regulations in sport. Cycling has been a pioneer in the fight against doping in sport under the leadership of the UCI and this role has been recognised by WADA.

Today’s young riders do not deserve to be branded or tarnished by the past or to pay the price for the Armstrong era. Cycling has a future and those who will define that future can be found among the young generation of riders who have chosen to prove that you can compete and win clean.

Riders who were caught doping continue to do the sport a disservice by protesting that the UCI refused to engage with them. The reality is that these riders never contemplated such action until they were found positive by the UCI, and even then they refused to confess and co-operate with the UCI.

Those riders who made the choice to stop using performance enhancing drugs, and to share their stories to enable the new generation of riders to learn from the mistakes that were made in the past, can continue to support clean cycling.

The role that training and education has to play in discouraging doping at all levels is well recognised by the UCI. The UCI will engage with any rider that is willing to work with them in the fight against doping and interested in establishing what lessons can be learned and applied to its ‘True Champion or Cheat?” programme which is obligatory for all riders subject to anti-doping tests.

This is not the first time cycling has reached a crossroads or that it has had to begin anew and to engage in the painful process of confronting its past. It will do so again with renewed vigor and purpose and its stakeholders and fans can be assured that it will find a new path forward.

That process extends beyond the UCI and the anti-doping agencies including WADA, USADA, AFLD and CONI must contribute to it by also examining how many times they tested Lance Armstrong and by providing their own explanation for why he never tested positive in the tests that they respectively conducted.

The UCI tested Tyler Hamilton 40 times and found him positive. It tested Floyd Landis 46 times and found him positive as the winner of the Tour de France. The list of riders that it has found positive does not end there.

The UCI has tested Lance Armstrong 218 times. If Lance Armstrong was able to beat the system then the responsibility for addressing that rests not only with the UCI but also with WADA and all of the other anti-doping agencies who accepted the results.

The UCI supports WADA’s decision to create a working group to examine ‘The Ineffectiveness of the Fight Against Doping in Sport’ and proposes that it commence its work by examining the effectiveness of the system in place to detect the use of performance enhancing substances in cycling.

The UCI is committed to reviewing the environment upon which the sport operates in order to ensure that something like this never happens again. It has convened a special meeting of its Management Committee on Friday, October 26th to begin the process of examining the existing structures and introducing changes to safeguard the future of cycling.

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Jay.T.
Jay.T.
11 years ago

Lance Armstrong is a liar.

off-roadie
off-roadie
11 years ago

This is such a joke. Clearly, the sport is so clean these days. I can’t think of a single top pro who has tested positive in the past two years…oh wait… Well, everyone who hasn’t tested positive is surely clean. I mean, people who dope always test positive when tested…oh wait…

Void
Void
11 years ago

A doper is not he who dopes, but he who dopes and gets caught.

comekk
comekk
11 years ago

off roadie: i agree100%with u about the joke, i’ll say that who is the winner of does tour titles ?
the reason bike industry is as big as it is it because of one person only Lance armstrong !

I heve met the guy 3 times and cant say he is nice but he is the reason bike became so big in the usa

Lance was more than likely doping , nothing was found then, but who wasn’t doping ?

so the big question is who will the 7 tour tittles ?

Juanito
Juanito
11 years ago

Lance is the reason? Maybe if you were in your late 30’s or older and had to-had to get a USPS/Discovery/whoever the hell else replica bike and kit. His story was the thing of movies, and that shoulda been the tip off. It was too good to be true. As much as the whole fixie thing is lame, it’s brought new eyes to bikes, young eyes. They’re riding to school again, and Lance didn’t have crap to do with that. They’re heading out with friends and getting other friends on them, and Lance had nothing to do with that either. Maybe they’re riding some total mail order garbage, maybe they’re buying from a shop, but at least in my area they’re heading to the local shops, paying for product, paying for service, and looking at all the other bikes on the floor. Some are showing up for group rides. So yeah, Lance brought a lot of money for the folks who sponsored him, and now they’re shedding off his filth, like a junkie goign cold turkey. But the kids who are getting into riding are the heroes in my eyes.

gringo
gringo
11 years ago

@comekk: hopefully no one will win. Christian Prudhomme said he will leave the books blank for the Lance Era.
If you wonder why, have a look at this graphic…
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/08/24/sports/top-finishers-of-the-tour-de-france-tainted-by-doping.html?ref=cycling

Steve M
Steve M
11 years ago

Amazing how people can justify the cheating by the smokescreen of good used in many cases. Is Jerry Sandusky a good guy for forming a foundation for disadvantaged kids? Lance plotted a very risky strategy that relied on a house of human cards to stay up. It got windy when Floyd got busted…..

No doping-no Livestrong.

Matt
Matt
11 years ago

Lance is a scum of a person.

Topmounter
Topmounter
11 years ago

The sad part is that it was (more or less) a level playing field.

silverlining
silverlining
11 years ago

So when do we get to see UCI and WADA stripped of their titles and royalties?

Because if ONE guy can do this much damage to an entire sport, just imagine how much bigger the problem could be if there were more people involved. Nah, it’s just one guy. Glad this little mess is all behind us now.

jumpin G Hossiphat
jumpin G Hossiphat
11 years ago

michael vick still has a contract huh?

Yeahaaa!!!_
Yeahaaa!!!_
11 years ago

@Jumpin…. So true. Vick is an animal killer and people say we need to move on. F*** that.

satisFACTORYrider
satisFACTORYrider
11 years ago

5 bucks mcconaughey plays him in the movie. agree with stevem. those stupid made for sheep yellow wristbands was to throw the scent off from day one. you can fool alot of the people alot of the time.

giving up
giving up
11 years ago

They should just void the top 10 from 1996-2006 and call it a lost decade for cycling.

dale
dale
11 years ago

Who are the ultimate scum pipes? NIKE.

biikkee
biikkee
11 years ago

All professional and college sports have rampant drug use. College football, baseball, swimming, wrestling to name four. It’s not a cycling specific issue… when I was in high school, some football players were starting to use steroids to get the edge in college. “It’s not the Lance years of drug abuse,” but a much bigger issue. People need to open their eyes on what is really going on.

Adam12
Adam12
11 years ago

This is stupid on Pointless. I agree that the sport needs to be cleaned up but if the UCI thinks things are better now, they have their head in the sand. Stripping titles that are as old as the ones Lance has one is not going to help anything.

RC
RC
11 years ago

Let’s see, Lance doped, lots of others doped too. They need to take a page from NASCAR. There, someone gets caught cheating(!), they are fined relative to the infraction, and everybody races. No different here. A motor is a motor. And yes, the bike thing is as big as it is because of Mr. Lance Armstrong. Even those 65 year olds on “comfort” bikes. Just because the “bosses” are corrupt, doesn’t mean the “workers” should be thrown under the bus!!

Sancho
Sancho
11 years ago

regarding michael vick, it’s interesting how animal cruelty makes people more nutty than rape or child abuse which I’m sure high profile athletes have been involved in before.

RoDe
RoDe
11 years ago

Again this is just to funny. hahaha seriously they think they will get rid of dopers this way. This sport is forever damned to be named together with the word doping.

boobie
boobie
11 years ago

Lance doped, so did everyone else. If no one was doping, lance would have still been the best. But you can’t beat dopers unless you are too. It’s STUPID to go back and do this – leave it how it was, and lets move forward. You already said you can’t give it to 1-2-3 for any of those years because they ALL DOPED.

Fragglepussthechaste
Fragglepussthechaste
11 years ago

My take on it isn’t so much the fact that LA doped, as we can all assume a majority of the riders did, it was how he went about dealing with the accusations-particularly when the rest of his team finally came clean (pun intended) and said, Ya, Lance was the guest of honor at our doping parties.

Pablo
Pablo
11 years ago

Big deal, I think doping goes way deeper than just pros – I suspect you would find most top tier athletes in local amateur sports dope too. The tour is synonymous with doping just like NFL, MLB, NHL, World Cup, Olympics, etc. I think the health problems they will incur later in life will be punishment enough.

giving up
giving up
11 years ago

Yeah, what makes LA a bigger deal than all the other dopers is that he was a kingpin, a mob boss of doping, a huge force in perpetuating doping culture and escalating to the level of organized crime conspiracy. Everyone should read Hamilton’s book for the scoop on just how dirty it all was.

Mindless
Mindless
11 years ago

Those euros had been dreaming of this for a long time.

He is still the champ.

DaleC
DaleC
11 years ago

I am still waiting for someone to explain how everybody around him, teammates and competitors, was caught doping, but he wasn’t.

boobie
boobie
11 years ago

Nike paid off the UCI president on his behalf – $500K payment. you can google search, the news is out there.

tj
tj
11 years ago

Just wanted to say, I don’t know a single cyclist that got into it because of Lance. Because it’s fun, yes, but not because of a one-balled maniac with the lamest drug addiction possible.

Mike
Mike
11 years ago

I sick of hearing people say that it was an even playing field because everyone else was doping too so we should just leave Lance alone. That is the exact problem, everyone was doping and they will continue to do so until they see the consequence is worse than the reward. The UCI needs to make an example of Lance and everyone involved (personally I’m looking forward to hearing more about Johan). There are those of us who want to compete in a clean sport and cannot do so until the cheats are removed from the top levels.

dave
dave
11 years ago

I am confused at how there is so much investigation into Lance for doping, yet tons of other cyclist do it and no one seems to really care…to me it seems like taking out the big name is a part of the motivation…

But in all seriousness, if there is no proof aside from what people are saying (and most of them lied under oath in their own investigations, which to me hurts their credibility), I fail to see how it could lead to a full on conviction. I always thought proof was needed, and hearsay was ignored unless there were facts to back it up (keep in mind I have not read everything there is to know about this situation). On top of that, if all of the allegations are true, then anyone who tested him either administered the tests wrong, were terrible at reading the results, or were involved and hid them, which also hurts their credibility.

naytan
naytan
11 years ago

@DaleC Very few people around him were caught. Most just fessed up when faced with perjury charges. See Dave Z. Also: Marion Jones was never caught. How many tests did she pass before she fell victim to BALCO? If I recall it was in the neighborhood of 200, which is just about the same as LA

rich
rich
11 years ago

Law school lesson on hearsay:

OJ told me he won the Heisman trophy = hearsay. Not admissible in court to prove OJ won the Heisman.
OJ told me he killed his wife = not hearsay (a statement against your personal interest or one that opens you up to personal liability is not hearsay; technically it is an exception to the rule against hearsay, but the effect is the same). Admissible to prove OJ killed his wife.
I saw OJ kill his wife = not hearsay. You are testifying to what you saw personally not what you heard someone say.

Levi told me that Lance doped = Not admissible in court to prove Lance doped.
Lance told me that he did HGH and EPO = Admissible in court to prove Lance doped.
I saw Lance dope = Admissible in court to prove Lance doped.

Mindless
Mindless
11 years ago

naytan – what perjury charges? USADA has no such power, this is all not under oath. It is a private organization.

blahblahblah
blahblahblah
11 years ago

Still don’t care

Mallory
Mallory
11 years ago

@Mindless, most (if not all) witnesses in the USADA case also testified in front of the Grand Jury in the Federal case…Therefore they have sworn testimony. If they were to present conflicting testimony (from their GJ tesimony) in the USADA case and the Federal case is reopened, they could face perjury charges (and jail time ala Marion Jones). So once the Feds got sworn testimony, it was much easier for USADA to get the riders to submit their sworn affidavits.
Currently LA getting very close to that territory deposition.
LA is currently between a rock & a hard place…Has sworn testimony he didn’t dope (SCA testimony)…if he comes clean & admits he did dope…he purjures himself & faces potential jail time and he opens himself to numerous lawsuits.
One hot mess! only outdone by the cluster f**k the UCI is currently…

satisFACTORYrider
satisFACTORYrider
11 years ago

dope to the gills if you want! i just wanted the team rider race radio com to go away. to me, that piece of technology took the aggressive racing strategies away and that made it boring. i liked the riders dictating and having to react instinctually to what’s up front rather than the team car watchin feed from the heli coverage only to call a race from the car. hell, just like us normal wannabe racer folk do!

Yetiman
Yetiman
11 years ago

Just admit your mistake, it worked with Arnold.

Thank you Lance, you are still a legend!

Dick Fitzwell
Dick Fitzwell
11 years ago

“The only true crime is getting caught”…

k
k
11 years ago

i belive that in tdf without doping he would be champ anyway…

pepe
pepe
11 years ago

I will still admire Lance, he is definitely an example in cycling.

Mindless
Mindless
11 years ago

– if any of those people testified in front of the grand jury and USADA used any of that information in any form, then USADA committed a serious crime. Grand Jury testimony in any investigation that did not result in an indictment is completely secret.

Ajax
Ajax
11 years ago

Lance Armstrong is a dooooooooshbag. Livestrong steals your money and is unethical.

I hope Armstrong goes to jail.

Ruben Googlestein
Ruben Googlestein
11 years ago

Forget the TDF titles. What about the Leadville 100 course record? Strip that from Lance while your at it. Please!

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