Cycling: Anti-dope boss wants probe into Armstrong

Lance Armstrong says again after the latest revelations that he has never taken performance-enhancing drugs. Picture / Reuters

SAN JOSE - World Anti-Doping Agency chairman Dick Pound yesterday called on cycling officials to investigate a report that Lance Armstrong tested positive for the illegal blood-boosting drug EPO.

The tests were based on samples collected in 1999, when Armstrong won his first Tour de France.

The French sports daily L'Equipe reported Armstrong had tested positive six times for erythropoietin, or EPO, a drug that aids endurance by producing oxygen-rich red blood cells.

"It's not a 'he said, she said' scenario," Pound told the San Jose Mercury News.

"There were documents. Unless the documents are forgeries or manipulations of them, it's a case that has to be answered."

Armstrong, who retired after winning his seventh Tour last month, said on his website: "Yet again, a European newspaper has reported that I have tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs. I will simply restate what I have said many times: I have never taken performance-enhancing drugs."

Even while reaching iconic status in the US, Armstrong, 33, has faced constant drug rumours. In the past the Texan has attacked his accusers because they could not present concrete proof.

L'Equipe's four-page report included several documents involving the 1999 drug tests.

The paper showed what it said were the results of EPO tests from anonymous riders.

Then it showed Armstrong's medical certificates, signed by doctors and riders after the tests, and having the same identifying number printed on the positive results.
After collecting a sample, drug testers split it in two, called the A and B samples. During the 1999 Tour Armstrong's "A" samples showed no traces of drugs; there was no test for EPO then, and the cycling federation didn't begin testing for it until 2001.

The "A" samples were destroyed because they were negative.

But frozen "B" samples from the time were retested last year at France's national drug-testing laboratory as part of research to improve the EPO testing procedures it pioneered. L'Equipe's report is based on that testing.

Laboratory officials said they could not confirm the tests were Armstrong's. Labs usually do not know the names of the athletes they are testing.

The Anti-Doping Agency has an eight-year statute of limitations, but it is unlikely Armstrong would face sanctions. An athlete is declared to have a drug violation only after both the A and B samples test positive.

"You may leave town with your medal and money, but as science gets better there is an eight-year reach- back," Pound said.

Armstrong tested positive once, for an illegal corticosteroid during the second stage of the 1999 Tour de France, but was not penalised because the amount was minute. He said he used a corticosteroid cream for saddle sores.

Drug accusations against Armstrong are an emotional issue for Americans, who view him as an athletic hero because he won the world's most prestigious cycling event after surviving testicular cancer.

Millions wear his yellow Livestrong bracelets, which finance cancer research.

The French, though, never embraced him in the same way.

Some involved in the Tour have accused L'Equipe of fostering a negative image of the sport by aggressively reporting on drugs.

Many became sceptical of professional cyclists after a drug scandal hit the 1998 Tour, when customs agents seized performance-enhancing drugs from one team's officials.

Many also question Armstrong's nine-year association with trainer Michele Ferrari.

Last year the Italian doctor was found guilty of fraud and illegally practising as a pharmacist. He was accused of giving cyclists, but not Armstrong, performance drugs.

"If this doesn't change perspective in the US, it is absurd," said London Sunday Times journalist David Walsh, who co-wrote the controversial 2004 book, L. A. Confidential: The Secrets of Lance Armstrong.

But the president of USA Cycling, Jim Ochowicz, said the latest revelations would not have an impact on Armstrong's popularity.

"He did the impossible after the cancer and I don't think this changes that," he said.

Pound, however, said the onus of proof would shift to the International Cycling Union and then to Armstrong.

"The athletes involved have an obligation to issue more than the ritual denial," Pound said.

- REUTERS