Cycling teams at the Tour of Qatar yesterday welcomed the end of a US federal investigation into Lance Armstrong, saying they were hopeful the seven-time Tour of France champion could finally move on with his life.
Federal prosecutors dropped their investigation of Armstrong on Friday, ending a nearly two-year effort to determine whether the American cyclist and his teammates were involved in doping. Armstrong has long denied doping and said he was “gratified” by the decision.
Laurenzo Lapage, the Greenedge cycling sporting director who worked with Armstrong on the US Postal Service and Discovery Channel teams from 2003 to ’07, said the decision reaffirmed what most colleagues of Armstrong had long believed: he didn’t dope.
“Everyone who knows Lance and was racing and working with him knew this before,” said Lapage, as his team prepared for the first stage of the Tour of Qatar.
“It was not a surprise for anyone. It’s a good feeling that the truth is out now,” Lapage said. “The guy had a lot of success and a lot of people were jealous … People tried to break him down with lies and it is really good thing everything (is) over for him now. He did a lot of great things for cycling. It is his moment to live in peace.”
Johnny Weltz, the sporting director of the American team Garmin-Barracuda and who rode with Armstrong on the Motorola team in 1995, said Armstrong was an easy target.
Federal inquiry ideal
“The people who (made) these charges, they wanted to be Lance and didn’t manage it,” Weltz said.
“So OK, you can hit him in another way. These aren’t the right people to judge. For us and cycling, it was best that it was a federal investigation. They had no know-ledge up front and no past in the sport. I think most justice happens that way.”
Investigators looked at whether a doping programme was established for Armstrong’s team while, at least part of the time, they received government sponsorship from the US Postal Service. They also examined whether Armstrong encouraged or facilitated doping on the team.
Armstrong won the Tour de France every year from 1999-2005.
Several riders contend Armstrong doped including disgraced cyclist Floyd Landis, who claims Armstrong had a long-running doping system in place while they were teammates. Landis, who was stripped of the 2006 Tour de France title for drug use, acknowledged in 2010 he used performance-enhancing drugs after years of denying he cheated.
Several riders, including world sprint champion Mark Cavendish and former Armstrong teammate Yaroslav Popovych, refused to discuss the Armstrong matter ahead of their race in Doha. Officials from Popovych’s Radioshack-Nissan team also refused to discuss it.
