Thursday, September 15, 2005
Cat Out of the Bag
Top man at WADA Richard Pound outed UCI President Hein Verbruggen as the source of the L'Equipe story alleging Lance Armstrong was using EPO in the 1999 Tour. Pound told a press conference that Verbruggen told WADA he had shown all the data implicating Armstrong to L'Equipe's reporters and even gave them a copy of the file. It was also noted that only the UCI had the data necessary to link the anonymous samples to the riders (although the initial story indicated the code wasn't one you'd need a supercomputer to crack...)
Given Verbruggen's, ahem, controversial record as head of the UCI and the black sheep lame duck member of the UCI's management committee and former head of the German cycling federation Sylvia Schenk's personal crusade against Verbruggen, this latest news will probably now shift the focus to Verbruggen's stewardship of the sport. And given the personalities involved, this will get ugly quickly.
Unfortunate, because the UCI had an opportunity to underscore the progress it has made in combating doping in cycling since the infamous 1998 Tour.
Given Verbruggen's, ahem, controversial record as head of the UCI and the black sheep lame duck member of the UCI's management committee and former head of the German cycling federation Sylvia Schenk's personal crusade against Verbruggen, this latest news will probably now shift the focus to Verbruggen's stewardship of the sport. And given the personalities involved, this will get ugly quickly.
Unfortunate, because the UCI had an opportunity to underscore the progress it has made in combating doping in cycling since the infamous 1998 Tour.
