Earlier this week, French newspaper L’Equipe accused Lance Armstrong of cheating, and that he used EPO during his 1999 Tour De France win. I predicted that this would happen when Armstrong retired in July. Armstrong is not getting any support from the Internation Cycling Union. Hein Verbruggen, president of cycling’s governing body, had this to say:
“We have to wait and see if this is true. Only then will we be able to ask ourselves whether there should be any legal action and whether this is a further blow for cycling. I have to say this is not pleasant but, for the moment, it only involves Lance Armstrong and France.”
So why is his urine being tested 7 years later, when they have been testing for EPO since 2001? And why was his urine even labeled as his rather than being stored anonymously, as there is no longer a second sample to test? Why was there no EPO found in 2004 when that sample was tested? Why have none of the other 178 drug tests he has been subjected to come back positive since then? Did he magically become that much stronger in one year that he could maintain a win drug-free that he required a drug to obtain the first time?
This all seems rather silly to me. The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), states that they will not offer an opinion on the matter until they have seen all the evidence in one breath, and condemn Armstrong in the next. WADA President Dick Pound stated:
“It’s a pretty serious story if it is true. We’ve not decided what we’d do because I’ve not looked at all the details. We will look at the information available and then we will decide the best way to get as much light on this as possible. But what is good for me is it’s a lesson to anybody using drugs that we may not catch you on day one, but sooner or later, the truth will come out. Now the riders involved have a serious responsibility to explain how it is that the substance got into the system.”
So, despite not offering an opinion until seeing all of the evidence, you want to know how Lance Armstrong can explain how a substance that has never been found in any of his other samples despite being continuously tested found its way into a sample that was supposed to be anonymous, is 7 years old, and which had already been found negative a year or two ago?
Armstrong went on Larry King Live and discussed whether it would be worth the time and money to sue in order to find out who is trying to defame him, and thinks that there are two major motivating factors for this to come out right now. The first is that American and French relations have not been all that great recently, and this is a good way for the French to give us a big ol’ F-U. And the other motivating factor is that they can put up a four page spread in their paper and sell twice the usual circulation. Money talks, apparently.
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