Ozrider

This is from the New York Times

May 31, 2006
Lance Armstrong Is Cleared of Doping Charge

By SAMUEL ABT
PARIS, May 31 — A Dutch investigator appointed by the International Cycling Union cleared Lance Armstrong today of doping during the 1999 Tour de France, the first of seven he won consecutively, and strongly criticized international anti-doping authorities.

The investigator, Emile Vrijman, who headed the Dutch anti-doping agency for 10 years, said his report "exonerates Lance Armstrong completely" in the 1999 race. No other Tours were involved in his investigation.

Armstrong, a 34-year-old Texan who retired from the sport last July to devote himself to the fight against cancer, has strongly denied using banned substances during the 1999 Tour or any other race.

"The report confirms my innocence," Armstrong said in a statement today that attacked Dick Pound, the president of the World Anti-Doping Agency, which is generally known as WADA, and a French laboratory and officials who were also criticized by Vrijman.

The report, Armstrong said, "finds that Mr. Pound along with the French lab and the French ministry have ignored the rules and broken the law. They have also refused to cooperate with the investigation" — a charge confirmed by Vrijman — "in an effort to conceal the full scope of their wrongdoing.

"I have now retired," Armstrong continued, "but for the sake of all athletes still competing who deserve a level playing field and a fair system of drug testing, the time has come to take action against these kinds of attacks before they destroy the credibility of WADA and, in turn, the international anti-doping system."

His previous denials, including a charge that the case was a "witch hunt,"' while widely believed in the United States, have met with skepticism in much of Europe, especially France. Officials of the Tour de France have publicly challenged his truthfulness and snubbed him in their presentation in October of the route for this year's race, which begins July 1.

Tour officials said late today that they had no comment on the investigator's report because they had not read it.


I hope this ends the debates about Lance.

ViperZ

I really wish Lance would un-retire the cleats and take one more TdF "Just to Piss them off"

55/Rad

I predicted over a year ago he would take this year off and come back for one more next year.

I'm still betting on it. Not much, but some.

johnny99

Not over yet: https://www.velonews.com/news/fea/9933.0.html

alanbikehouston

And, tomorrow Lance will get smeared again. The UCI officials will complain that their own hired investigator gave his report to the press, instead of letting those officials decide how much of the report to make public. Dick Pound and WADA will whine that following rules, laws and procedures hampers their efforts to ignore the current use of drugs in the pro peloton while carrying on a vendetta against a retired rider.

And, all of the folks who are failures in their own lives will claim "Lance could not have won without cheating...hard work and ability has nothing to do with his success".

Chucklehead

major league baseball hired its own investigator to look into the barry bonds issue.

Lucky07

Meh. Sick of the back and forth. Both sides have dirtied themselves in this affair.

hiromian

The news does not surprise me in the least. Just par for the course.

I work for a France based company and I and all who work there have come to the conclusion that the French in France at our company are very similar to the France reputation of being idiots, rude, stupid, emotional, give up all the time, hate Americans (thats not exclusive to the French) and generaly have an arrigance which is baseless. (some people get arrigant because they are quite successfull at something, This is not the French excuse) The company I work for sucks since they stuck a GM in from Paris. In all my career I have not seen turnover as high as the company I work for since the new GM came in. Ahh, getting that off my chest makes me feel better.



That said, the previous GM from some other town in France was one of the best GMs I ever worked for.

adamastor

"I hope this ends the debates about Lance."

Don't think so.
The report, which has not been delivered officially, is apparently 132 pages long, but does NOT give any conclusions on how 6 Armstrong samples (different stages, different "pipi" samples) contain (still contain, as the samples are still available in refrigerated) EPO.

The report just goes on on who revealed what, and under what circumstances. So the form has been described, but no one went to the root of the problem: are the samples positive or not?

I know it's not the same level of importance, but Al Capone was never convicted for murder, although everyone agrees dozens were committed under his orders.

What is reassuring is, that those famous samples are still well stored somewhere. Some day, in 1 year, 2 years, or 20, some method will be found to link those positive samples to Armstrong for sure, and scientists will clearly say: "Yepp. He was positive. He can't be banned, or legally charged for it, but he was definitely positive."

cs1

A similar article https://www.washtimes.com/national/20...250r_page2.htm I doubt the French will ever stop going after Lance with their crazy conspiracy theories.

Tim

aham23

If this special investigation did NOT test the samples then there is NO way they can CLEAR him of doping. From my reading, they did NOT test or re-test the 99 samples??? Later.

pathdoc

Why was the lab working on 1999 samples and why would they leak info? That's a serious confidentiality violation. In the US someone would get a heavy fine or possibly go to jail for the same violation.

bccycleguy

The French have never been able to deal with Armstrong winning their Tour, and they never will. It'll be a generation before they can put this behind them.

brunop

i predict that NO frenchman will ever win the tour again in our lifetime.

steve_wmn

I think the report will say that the samples were worthless. Reportedly they were found to be unsealed when they were first pulled out of the refridgerator for testing, and the level of surveillance on the samples was inadequate and the chain of custody for them was poorly documented. In short, they could easily have been tampered with and probably were.

SilentShifter

And yet another win for Lance. Eventually they will get the message that he always has been clean.

CosmicRocker

Here is something I have never seen mentioned anywhere.

Did anyone here read "It's Not About The Bike"? In that book, Lance says himself that he took EPO while undergoing treatment for cancer. I'm not a doctor, but maybe he was taking the EPO TO STAY ALIVE. Now, how long would would that show up in bloodwork? AND, how much of the EPO did these "experts" find in his 1999 samples? Could a trace of EPO show up in a person's blood 2 or 3 years later? I wouldn't be surprised.

cyclintom

EPO is only detectable for a couple of days. However, the test has been shown to show positives for other proteins that are in the blood of some endurance athletes.

Here's the real point - the chain of custody of the samples has never been established. Let's face it - if you see the results being leaked all over the place and you can't tell who had the stuff in their possession, how could anyone ever rely on such results?

Also, they were using past samples and a new test. Since the test itself wasn't approved, the results could never be accepted as valid.

steve_wmn said that the samples were found open. I've never heard that and I very much doubt it.

I believe that the samples themselves were handled properly, I just don't think that the combination of new test and completely uncontrolled handling can give valid results.

And consider this - blood packing is MORE effective than EPO. The red blood cells are more mature and last longer in the blood stream. What's more, it can't be detected if the cheater uses his own blood stored beforehand.

steve_wmn

Read the report. Here's an excerpt:

pathdoc

Chain of custody/specimen integrity is lab basic 101. They should have known better.

Bike Lover

Well, you all (not ya'all) were right. It seems there is no letting up from the French (from Reuters):


MONTREAL (Reuters) - The head of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) blasted a report clearing seven-times Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong of doping allegations as "bordering on farcical" on Friday.

Chairman Dick Pound said in a statement that WADA was considering legal action after the investigation headed by lawyer Emile Vrijman and the Dutch law firm Scholten accused the agency of behaving in ways "completely inconsistent" with testing rules.

The independent investigation exonerated Armstrong of doping during the 1999 Tour, which he won, and determined the testing procedures at the French national doping laboratory LNDD had been insufficient to label the American's sample positive.

Vrijman also stated in the report that WADA and the LNDD had effectively pronounced Armstrong guilty of a doping violation without sufficient basis.

Armstrong, who retired last July, has vehemently denied ever using performance-enhancing drugs.

In a harshly worded statement, WADA said it completely rejected the so-called "Vrijman report" and that its preliminary conclusion was that "the report was defamatory to the Agency, its officers and employees, as well as the accredited laboratory involved."

The agency said it had taken legal advice regarding its recourses against the investigator and any organization, including the International Cycling Union (UCI), that may publicly adopt its conclusions.

"WADA is an independent agency, comprised of equal representatives from the sports movement and the governments, which is concerned with the integrity of sport and the health of the athletes who practice it," said Pound in a statement.

"Our only interest in this matter is to determine the facts in an objective manner, whatever they may be.

"The Vrijman report is so lacking in professionalism and objectivity that it borders on farcical.

"Were the matter not so serious and the allegations it contains so irresponsible, we would be inclined to give it the complete lack of attention it deserves."

French sports daily L'Equipe reported last August that it had access to laboratory documents and six of Armstrong's urine samples collected on the 1999 Tour showed "indisputable" traces of the blood-boosting drug erythropoietin (EPO).

A formal test for EPO was first introduced at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

The UCI and WADA have waged a long-running feud over several doping issues.

WADA added more fuel to the fire on Friday, expressing its "astonishment that the UCI would expect anyone to have the slightest confidence in the objectivity, methodology, analysis or conclusions of such a report, especially since UCI had had more than six weeks during which to review the draft report and to correct the many factual errors contained in it."

The UCI were unavailable for immediate comment.

(Writing by Steve Keating in Toronto)

Is it really so important for the French to try and discredit him? Afterall, he did bring alot of press and increase of knowledge (on this side of the pond) about the race.

johnny99

WADA is not French. It was created by the International Olympic Committee and is headquartered in Montreal, Canada. WADA is funded by both the Olympic Committee and individual national governments, with the USA being one of the largest contributors. Chairman Dick Pound was born in Canada and is a former member of the Canadian Olympic team.

While one French newspaper has been actively involved in this investigation, I think that is natural when the Tour de France is one of the most important sporting events in France. I don't think what l'Equipe is doing is any different from USA newspapers reporting rumors against Barry Bonds.

Chad's Colnago

I'm glad you brought that up, I was just about to comment on that. Sample custody may sound silly and or trivial for those who don't work in a lab or in pharmaceutical research, but documentation of sample custody is very very important. When we get audited by the FDA one of the very first things they review is our documentation of the samples that are in question. If you can't provide clear documentation as to the custody of samples you may as well consider those samples useless. It is a very bid deal.

patentcad

Duh. Did anyone really think this half-baked 'we re-tested the alleged frozen samples without the chain of evidence from 7 years ago' crap cooked up by L'Equipe was going to amount to anything other than a smear campaign? That's like saying 'the Tour Director buggers little girls' and putting it on the front page of a national publication. It is beyond astonishing that anyone paid attention to this in the first place.

Anything to sell newspapers in France. And of course there are bike weenies here who WILL take it seriously. Which says more about the intelligence quotient on this board than any comment I can ever make.

gurana

Yea, that's basically what I was 'concerned' about... not that I care, but my first thought when I heard about some organization re-testing oldish samples was, "Well, how can we be sure who's had their hands on this during this time?" Your additional points about old samples and new tests and false positives also seem like they would be enough to cast doubt on ANY result on these samples. So, even in the event that they come back negative, therefore seemingly exhonerating LA, I would be just as doubtful. In otherwords, for me, we're never going to know 100% whether or not he actually cheated. Like I said before, I don't really care, I don't have anything invested in Lance Armstrong.