The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) says it will strip Lance Armstrong of his unparalleled seven Tour de France titles after he declared on Thursday that he would stop fighting the drug charges the organisation had laid.
Armstrong’s announcement put at risk his legacy as one of the greatest sportsmen of all time. He insisted that the decision was not an admission of doping but prompted by weariness with the prolonged legal dispute.
USADA chief executive Travis Tygart said Armstrong would have a lifetime ban imposed today (on Friday) as well as having the Tour titles stripped. Armstrong asserted that the USADA had no authority to take away his titles.
Armstrong, who retired last year, declined to enter the USADA’s arbitration process — his last option — because, he said, he was weary of fighting accusations that have dogged him for years. He has consistently pointed to the hundreds of drug tests he has passed as proof of his innocence during his extraordinary run of Tour titles stretching from1999 to 2005.
“There comes a point in every man’s life when he has to say, ‘Enough is enough.’ For me, that time is now,” Armstrong said in a statement sent to The Associated Press. He called the USADA investigation an “unconstitutional witch-hunt.”
“I have been dealing with claims that I cheated and had an unfair advantage in winning my seven Tours since 1999,” Armstrong said. “The toll this has taken on my family and my work for our foundation and on me leads me to where I am today — finished with this nonsense.”
The USADA treated Armstrong’s decision as an admission of guilt, hanging the label of drug cheat on an athlete who was a hero to thousands for overcoming life-threatening testicular cancer and for his foundation’s support for cancer research.
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