Lance Armstrong has abruptly slammed the door on U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, Wednesday, February 20, while USADA thought the former seven-time winner of the Tour de France would confide in the hope of seeing his lifetime ban reduced. Lance Armstrong “will not participate in USADA’s efforts to selectively conduct American prosecutions that only demonize selected individuals while failing to address the 95 per cent of the sport over which USADA has no jurisdiction,” said lawyer Tim Herman in a statement to the press apparently without informing USADA beforehand.
The former U.S. cyclist had until today to agree to provide under oath the U.S. Agency with details of his activities, after failing to do during his televised confession to Oprah Winfrey, mid-January. The USADA was quick to respond, through a statement by its President Travis Tygart, who has become the enemy of Armstrong: “Today we learned from the media that Mr. Armstrong is choosing not to come in and be truthful and that he will not take the opportunity to work toward righting his wrongs in sport,” Tygart wrote.
The USADA will continue its work in close collaboration with the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and other “appropriate and meaningful” international authorities. Words that sound like a new stone thrown into the garden of the International Federation of Cycling (UCI), heavily suspected by USADA to have covered Armstrong’s doping. “Over the last few weeks he has led us to believe that he wanted to come in and assist USADA, but was worried of potential criminal and civil liability if he did so,” Tygart also explained.
It is based on a USADA investigation that Armstrong was ousted from cycling in October and banned for life. The USADA tried to leverage his appetite for competition to reduce his lifetime ban from sports in exchange for revealing all he knows about doping in cycling.
According to Tim Herman, Armstrong attorney, the disgraced cyclist is willing to be a part of the cycling clean-up: “He will be the first man through the door, and once inside will answer every question, at an international tribunal formed to comprehensively address pro cycling, an almost exclusively European sport.”
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