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Lance Armstrong Faced With New Doping Charges, Potential Loss Of Tour De France Titles

Lance Armstrong is either an American hero and one of the best athletes of all time, or a liar and a cheat. There’s no in between.

Armstrong was just slapped with a new batch of formal doping charges by the USADA (U.S. Anti-Doping Agency). He’s been immediately banned from triathlon competitions and potentially can be stripped of his seven Tour De France Titles in the future. The charges claim that Armstrong’s blood samples were “fully consistent with blood manipulation including EPO use and/or blood transfusions.” EPO is a performance-enhancing hormone that is often used (illegally) by competitive endurance athletes.

To this point, Armstrong has survived a two-year investigation from the U.S. Attorney’s office and has never been saddled with a positive test. He’s still innocent until proven guilty. These allegations should raise more than a few eyebrows, but nothing is definite yet. And Armstrong, for his part, vehemently denied the charges. Here’s a part of his statement:

“I have never doped, and, unlike many of my accusers, I have competed as an endurance athlete for 25 years with no spike in performance, passed more than 500 drug tests and never failed one.”

For now, we’ve got to believe Armstrong. But things are certainly getting murkier, and we might find out the truth soon enough. If he’s indeed lying, the fallout would be cataclysmic.

[Washington Post]

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