Armstrong investigation ongoing
David Howman, director general of the World Anti-Doping Agency, has recently compared the current American federal investigation into the US Postal Service team (USPS) to the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO) investigation which exposed the widespread
use of steroids in American baseball and athletics.
“Some information will come out of the current inquiries that will be equally as significant as BALCO,” said Howman to the
Associated Press.
The comparison certainly suggests that the so-far confidential evidence and testimony collected by the Jeff Novitzky-led investigation is important and quite serious. Novitzky, of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), also led much of the BALCO investigation.
The USPS case began with Floyd Landis’ confession of career-long doping, including his time with USPS when he rode as a teammate to Lance Armstrong. Because the US Postal Service is a federal organisation, the FDA stepped in to investigate Landis’ claims.
“I think that’s a matter for the sport to address,” said Howman of the regularity of doping scandals in cycling. “Our job is to make sure the anti-doping program is OK. If, after that, we still find people who are cheating, they’ve got to sit back and say,
‘What do we do now?”’
Landis won the Tour de France in 2006, but his blood taken during the event was found to be positive for banned substances and his victory was revoked. He has said he was an eye-witness to seven-time Tour winner Lance Armstrong undergoing blood transfusions,
an effective banned doping practice. So far, Armstrong hasn’t been formally implicated by Novitzky, but many of his former teammates have been approached to testify.
"I am cooperating with the federal investigation and look forward to setting the record straight,” said physiologist Allen Lim. “When I worked with Floyd, I repeatedly told him that he didn't need to dope and should not dope, and I was absolutely not hired
to help him to do so. Since then, I've spent my career promoting clean sport and keeping innumerable athletes from cheating, as well as assisting in catching those who are."
Lim is Armstrong’s current physiologist, as of the launch of Team RadioShack at the beginning of the season. He has been working in cycling for most of his career. He and Armstrong’s former team Kevin Livingstone are the most recent names to be called to
testify before the grand jury in Los Angeles. Livingstone supported Armstrong’s winning races at the Tour de France in 1999 and 2000, and is now working as a cycling coach.
“Anyone or anything associated with Lance Armstrong should be very worried right now,” said Al DiGuido, CEO of Zeta Interactive, a marketing firm which claims Armstrong’s popularity has gone from 92 percent in 2008 to 51 percent in 2010. “He has faced these
kinds of allegations before, but the fuel really seems to be kicking in this time.”
Armstrong and his attorney Tim Hermans have frequently used the phrase “the most extensively tested athlete of all time” and Hermans told
Cyclingnews that he has passed every test, which was an oversight. When the test for EPO was validated in 2005, the French national anti-doping lab (LNDD) tested Armstrong stored blood samples from the 1999 Tour, the first of his seven consecutive
winning years, and the test returned positive. The case was never pursued after a UCI-appointed lawyer recommended that the blood was too old to completely rule-out tampering.
“Now, that's an extraordinary claim,” said Dr. Michael Ashenden in 2009. “There's never ever been any evidence the laboratory has ever spiked an athlete's sample, even during the Cold War, where you would've thought there was a real political motive to frame
an athlete from a different country. There's never been any suggestion that it happened.”
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