LAUSANNE: The International Olympic Committee yesterday said that they would be looking at the US Anti-Doping Agency’s report into cyclist Lance Armstrong before deciding whether to strip him of his Olympic bronze medal.
“The IOC is aware of the USADA report and is currently studying it with all the corresponding documentation,” a spokesman for the Lausanne, Switzerland-based body said.
“It would be premature at this stage to say if the IOC envisages taking any steps. If we find proof that justifies the opening of disciplinary procedures, we will of course act as a result.”
Armstrong, who risks being officially stripped of all his seven Tour de France wins, won bronze in the individual time trial in Sydney behind gold medallist Vyacheslav Ekimov of Russia and Germany’s Jan Ullrich who took silver.
The Texan was on Wednesday placed at the heart of what the USADA said was the biggest doping programme in sports history, as it published a 202-page document to back up its previous decision in August to ban him for life.
The world anti-doping code has a maximum eight-year delay to put forward evidence of drug misuse but the USADA has exceeded that given the extent of the programme used by Armstrong and his entourage.
Tyler Hamilton, one of the 11 former team-mates who testified against Armstrong, handed back the time-trial gold medal that he won at the 2004 Athens Olympics in early 2011, after he confessed to doping.
The IOC corrected the podium before the time limit expired, handing the gold to Ekimov.
Meanwhile, the winner’s list for the Tour de France, is likely to have a seven-year gap, after organisers said they were against re-attributing disgraced rider Lance Armstrong’s wins.
The development came as the sport’s world governing body said it was studying the extensive dossier on the Texan as a “priority”, amid calls for its honorary president to quit and the possibility of legal action against three Spaniards implicated.
Armstrong was guilty of doping violations and recommended he was stripped of his career victories, raising questions about who would replace him at the top of the Tour podium between 1999 and 2005. Tour director Christian Prudhomme said he was against re-allocating Armstrong’s victories, describing the revelations contained in the USADA’s 202-page “reasoned decision” and more than 1,000 pages of supporting testimony as “damning”.
REUTERS
