USADA Presents Lance Armstrong Evidence To Public

((HT: ESPN))

The US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) came to show everyone what the beef was with Lance Armstrong... and Travis Tygart held nothing back...

The evidence shows beyond any doubt that the US Postal Service Pro Cycling Team ran the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen.

The evidence of the US Postal Service Pro Cycling Team-run scheme is overwhelming and is in excess of 1000 pages, and includes sworn testimony from 26 people, including 15 riders with knowledge of the US Postal Service Team (USPS Team) and its participants’ doping activities. The evidence also includes direct documentary evidence including financial payments, emails, scientific data and laboratory test results that further prove the use, possession and distribution of performance enhancing drugs by Lance Armstrong and confirm the disappointing truth about the deceptive activities of the USPS Team, a team that received tens of millions of American taxpayer dollars in funding.

15 members of the then-US Postal Service were interviewed by USADA, 11 of them teammates: Frankie Andreu, Michael Barry, Tom Danielson, Tyler Hamilton, George Hincapie, Floyd Landis, Levi Leipheimer, Stephen Swart, Christian Vande Velde, Jonathan Vaughters and David Zabriskie.

More from Tygart:

The evidence demonstrates that the ‘Code of Silence’ of performance enhancing drug use in the sport of cycling has been shattered, but there is more to do. From day one, we always hoped this investigation would bring to a close this troubling chapter in cycling’s history and we hope the sport will use this tragedy to prevent it from ever happening again.

TJ Quinn discusses...if only for a minute...


Three other members of US Postal, including DS Johan Bruyneel, have chosen to take their cases to arbitration. Two others, both team physicians, received lifetime bans from the sport.

Armstrong has long contested the charges saying he was one of the most tested athletes in the history of sport- never contracting a positive test.

His attorney, Tim Herman, called the report "a one-sided hatchet job -- 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."

Which, of course, is what Armstrong's lawyer would say...

More when the documents are released...