The United States Anti-Doping Agency announced Wednesday that it would soon make public its doping file on Lance Armstrong and that the file would include details of what the agency is calling the most sophisticated and professional doping program in recent sports history.
The agency said its dossier on Armstrong, the seven-time Tour de France winner and cancer survivor who denies ever doping, will include sworn testimony from 26 people, including nearly a dozen former teammates on the United States Postal Service team. Those Postal Service teammates have admitted their own doping and say that Armstrong doped, encouraged doping and administered doping products on the team, the agency said on Wednesday.
The teammates who came forward and submitted sworn affidavits included George Hincapie, one of the most respected American riders in recent history, Levi Leipheimer, Tyler Hamilton and others who are among the best cyclists of Armstrong’s generation.
Their testimony is expected to be the most widespread effort to break the code of silence in cycling that has existed for decades and perpetuated the pervasive doping in the sport.
The agency, which said its file on Armstrong consists of more than a thousand pages of evidence that will be made public Wednesday afternoon on its Web site, will detail the sanctions imposed upon those riders for admitting doping.
The agency said the evidence reveals “conclusive and undeniable proof that brings to the light of day for the first time this systemic, sustained and highly professionalized team-run doping conspiracy.”
“The U.S.P.S. Team doping conspiracy was professionally designed to groom and pressure athletes to use dangerous drugs, to evade detection, to ensure its secrecy and ultimately gain an unfair competitive advantage through superior doping practices,” the agency said. “A program organized by individuals who thought they were above the rules and who still play a major and active role in sport today.”
The evidence against Armstrong features financial payments, e-mails, scientific analyses and laboratory test results that show Armstrong was doping and was the kingpin of the doping conspiracy, the agency said. Several years of Armstrong’s blood values showed evidence of doping, said a person involved in the case who did not want his name used because the results have not been revealed yet.
“It’s shocking, it’s disappointing,” said Travis Tygart, chief executive of the antidoping agency. “But we did our job.”
On Tuesday, Armstrong’s legal team tried to preemptively discredit Usada’s report in a letter to the antidoping agency’s lawyer, Bill Bock.
Timothy J. Herman, one of Armstrong’s lawyers, called the case a farce. “Usada, the prosecutor, now pretends to issue its own ‘reasoned decision,’ even though there was no judge, no jury and no hearing,” Herman said in the letter.
When Armstrong decided in August not to contest Usada’s charges, he agreed to forgo an arbitration hearing at which the evidence against him would have been aired, possibly publicly.
Armstrong, through his spokesman, said Wednesday morning that he had no comment on the Usada report.
Under the World Anti-Doping Code, the antidoping agency must submit its evidence against Armstrong to the International Cycling Union, which has 21 days from the receipt of the case file to appeal the matter to the Court of Arbitration for Sport. Once it makes its decision, the World Anti-Doping Agency will then have 21 days in which to appeal.
The cycling union and the World Anti-Doping Agency are expected to receive the Armstrong file Wednesday, before it is made public.
The antidoping agency has been gathering evidence on Armstrong for the past several years, with its efforts increasing after Floyd Landis, the 2006 Tour winner who was stripped of the title for doping, contacted Tygart in 2010. Landis told Tygart that he, Armstrong and others on the Postal Service team were involved in systematic doping supported by the team.
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