KEY POINTS:
Dick Pound, head of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), says an International Olympic Committee (IOC) reprimand will not stop him from seeking answers to doping allegations surrounding Lance Armstrong.
"If Lance thinks this is going to make me go away he is sadly mistaken," a defiant Pound said
today.
The retired seven-times Tour de France champion has denied using performance-enhancing drugs after reports he used the banned blood-booster erythropoietin (EPO) during his career.
In May last year, an independent investigation cleared him of doping during the 1999 Tour and accused anti-doping authorities of violating testing rules.
Armstrong filed a complaint against Pound for continuing the allegations.
Ruling on the complaint, the IOC Ethics commission recommended the WADA chief had, "the obligation to exercise greater prudence consistent with the Olympic spirit when making public pronouncements that may affect the reputation of others."
Retroactive testing of samples taken during the 1999 Tour were conducted only after an approved test for EPO had been developed.
The French sports daily L'Equipe reported that six of 15 positive results were produced by samples provided by Armstrong.
Pound believes many questions surrounding the positive tests have yet to be answered by the International Cycling Union (UCI) or Armstrong.
"These are documents. This is an accredited laboratory that found EPO in (Armstrong's) urine from 1999 and it's been matched with forms you signed so if the analysis is right and the forms aren't forgeries you may have something to explain," said Pound, a Montreal lawyer and Canadian IOC member.
"That's as far as I've gone.
"He (Armstrong) has done nothing about the L'Equipe article and has done nothing except complain about me for some unknown reason. I've said those are the facts.
"The UCI knows 15 samples showed EPO and six of them have been linked with (Armstrong), there are another nine that the UCI knows who they are that they aren't doing anything about.
"We think this is something that ought to be looked at by the UCI."
Armstrong hailed the IOC ruling as a victory, saying in a New York Times article that it "establishes a certain precedent that the head of WADA has to act a certain way in public".
But the ruling has done little to silence Pound.
"This (the positive 1999 tests linked to Armstrong by L'Equipe) isn't the only piece of evidence that the UCI could consider if it wished to do something," Pound said.
"There's lots of other evidence around.
"You would have to test it and make sure it was reliable but there's evidence given under oath by people who were on the same team who have claimed to have heard Lance admit to all this stuff.
"It's there for the UCI to deal with. They may conclude it is not sufficient or they might conclude it was eight years ago and we're not going to do anything about," he added.
"I don't know what they are going to do. The UCI has shown no interest in doing anything about it."
The UCI could not be reached for comment.
- REUTERS
