CHICAGO: The anti-cancer charity founded by disgraced US cyclist Lance Armstrong will survive despite the doping scandal that forced Armstrong out of the organisation, Livestrong Foundation’s boss said yesterday.
“Will the Livestrong Foundation survive? Yes. Absolutely yes,” Andy Miller, head of Livestrong operations, said in what was billed as a “major” speech at the foundation’s annual meeting in Chicago.
“Our work is too meaningful, our role too unique, the need too great, to stand for any other answer.”
Armstrong was stripped of seven Tour de France titles last year after a US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) report put him at the center of what it called the biggest doping conspiracy in cycling history.
In a January television interview with talk show host Oprah Winfrey, Armstrong ended years of denials and confessed he used performance-enhancing substances to help him win the Tour de France from 1999 through 2005.
Armstrong founded Livestrong in 1997 after he underwent chemotherapy to overcome testicular cancer. The USADA report forced him to step down last year as Livestrong’s chairman and later resign from its board of directors,.
“Our success has never been based on one person,” Miller said. “It’s based on the patients and survivors we serve every day who approach a cancer diagnosis with hope, courage and perseverance,” Miller said. AFP
