USADA report: Lance Armstrong was “a serial cheat”

Lance Armstrong's reputation received a severe blow after the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) labelled him a "serial" cheat who led "the most sophisticated, professionalised and successful doping programme that sport has ever seen". Usada has already banned Armstrong for life and stripped him of his seven Tour de France titles. Now the agency has published details and evidence from 11 of Armstrong's former team-mates. Armstrong has always denied doping. Armstrong's lawyer has described Usada's report as a "one-sided hatchet job". Sean Breen called it 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". In an statement accompanying its report, Usada chief executive Travis Tygart said there was "conclusive and undeniable proof" that Armstrong's was a cheat who was at the heart of a team-run doping conspiracy. The report has been sent to the International Cycling Union (UCI), the World Anti-Doping Agency and the World Triathlon Corporation. Usada says it has "found proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Lance Armstrong engaged in serial cheating through the use, administration and trafficking of performance-enhancing drugs and methods that Armstrong participated in running in the US Postal Service Team as a doping conspiracy". It added that his goal of winning the Tour de France multiple times "led him to depend on EPO, testosterone and blood transfusions but also, more ruthlessly, to expect and to require that his team-mates would likewise use drugs to support his goals if not their own. It was not enough that his team-mates give maximum effort on the bike, he also required that they adhere to the doping programme outlined for them or be replaced. He was not just a part of the doping culture on his team, he enforced and re-enforced it. Armstrong's use of drugs was extensive and the doping programme on his team, designed in large part to benefit Armstrong, was massive and pervasive. Armstrong and his co-conspirators sought to achieve their ambitions through a massive fraud now more fully exposed. So ends one of the most sordid chapters in sports history." British Cycling performance director Dave Brailsford described the report as "jaw dropping". "It is shocking, it's jaw dropping and it is very unpleasant. It's not very palatable and anybody who says it is would be lying, wouldn't they?", Brailsford says. The UCI now has 21 days to decide whether to appeal against or comply with Usada's decision to strip Armstrong, who now competes in triathlons, of his Tour de France titles and ban him for life.