Lance Armstrong Faces Doping Charges From Usada

The United States Anti-Doping Agency, USADA, has made formal allegations against Lance Armstrong, only four months after federal officials dropped a nearly two-year investigation of the seven-time Tour de France winner. According to an open letter sent to Armstrong the doping charges made by the Agency also include Johan Bruyneel, manager of Armstrong's winning teams; team doctors Pedro Celaya and Luis Garcia del Moral from Span; team trainer Pepe Marti; and his team’s consulting doctor and personal trainer Dr. Michele Ferrari. It seems that the ghosts of doping and the allegations keep on resurfacing against the 7-time winner of what many consider the most demanding sporting competition in the World.
Perhaps it is the envy of all the other professional riders who were caught cheating with performance enhancing drugs during the same time as Armstrong kept on winning. Perhaps it is his a little too perfect story that makes him they prey of the envious. One thing is for certain. In an age when the top riders in the professional field were all using some sort of performance enhancing drug, the only guy who says to always had played by the rules, won the biggest price of them all, the Tour de France’s Maillot Jaune, 7 times.
According to USADA's letter, "numerous riders, team personnel and others will testify" they either saw Armstrong dope or heard him tell them he used EPO, blood transfusions, testosterone and cortisone from 1996 to 2005, the years when he was the most productive. Following this logic, it is easily assumed that Armstrong could have used performance-enhancing drugs while he won the Tour de France from 1999 to 2005. The formentioned letter also says blood collections obtained by cycling's governing body in 2009 and '10 during the Tour de France, when he came out of retirement to give pro-cylcing another chance are �fully consistent with blood manipulation including EPO use and/or blood transfusions.�
If Lance Armstrong is successfully convicted by the USADA, the Union Cycliste Internationale, or UCI as its commonly known, would have the authority to strip him of Tour titles, as the federation has done in the Floyd Landis and Alberto Contador cases. It is very possible that the USADA would try to bring up the same witnesses against Armstrong that have been used in other investigations. It is well known that both Floyd Landis and Tyler Hamilton have publicly said that they have seen and/or heard Armstrong use and refer to the use of illegal substances to increase his performance.
But there could be witnesses that could talk about drug use as early as 1996. Let’s not forget that in 1996, Armstrong was diagnosed with testicular cancer, and that same year his then-teammate Frankie Andreu and Andreu's wife, Betsy, heard him admit to doping, as they have previously testified. For now, all we can say about this is that the announcement is going to keep Lance Armstrong from taking part of the Ironman triathlon in Nice on June 24 because of the USADA proceedings.