Report: Armstrong at center of doping

Published: October 11, 2012 

Eleven former teammates testified against the seven-time Tour de France winner.

The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency on Wednesday released details of its investigation of Lance Armstrong, calling it the most sophisticated doping program in recent sports history — a program in which it said Armstrong played a key role by doping, supplying doping products and demanding that his top teammates dope so he could be successful.

A 202-page account of the agency’s case against Armstrong included sworn testimony from 26 people, including nearly a dozen former teammates on Armstrong’s U.S. Postal Service and Discovery Channel squads who said they saw Armstrong doping to help him win every one of his record seven Tour de France titles.

The file was the most extensive, groundbreaking layout of Armstrong’s alleged doping, bolstered by new interviews, financial statements and laboratory results.

The agency said witnesses’ testimony was so damning that it did not need any corroborating evidence to make its case, though its report included financial payments, email messages, laboratory results and scientific data that the agency said proved Armstrong cheated by using banned performance-enhancing drugs and blood transfusions.

“The USPS 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.”

Timothy J. Herman, one of Armstrong’s lawyers, said in an email that the 202-page report “will be a one-sided hatchet job — a taxpayer-funded tabloid piece rehashing old, disproved, unreliable allegations based largely on axe-grinders, serial perjurers, coerced testimony, sweetheart deals and threat-induced stories.”

The teammates who came forward and submitted sworn affidavits included some of the best cyclists of Armstrong’s generation: Levi Leipheimer, Tyler Hamilton and George Hincapie, one of the most respected U.S. riders in recent history.

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