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Sordid Armstrong cycling era finally comes to end
JAMES P. MOORHEAD
Law Bulletin columnist
Published: November 12, 2018
The Lance Armstrong era of cycling finally has come to an end. The era began when Armstrong joined the professional cycling ranks in 1992 shortly after the Summer Olympic Games in Barcelona, Spain. It ended in 2018 in the small city of Lausanne, Switzerland.
On Wednesday, Oct. 24, the Court of Arbitration for Sport handed out lifetime bans to Johan Bruyneel and Pedro Celaya, Armstrong’s former team director and doctor, respectively. The court also gave Armstrong’s team trainer, Pepe Marti, an additional seven years to his original eight years.
“Mr. Bruyneel was at the top of the pyramid of one of the largest doping programs which ever existed in any sport on the planet,” the final 104-page court report said.
These lifetime bans are the final result of cases that began in 2012. The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency charged them and others with doping violations in cycling. Those cases resulted in a 10-year ban from cycling for Bruyneel and an eight-year ban for each Celaya and Marti.
After those bans were handed out, the World Anti-Doping Agency wanted more significant punishments for the three men. The world agency appealed the three cases to the arbitration court to seek additional punishment.
Lance Armstrong, the center of the entire doping scandal, received a lifetime ban years ago when he refused to defend himself against doping charges. Armstrong, once the golden child of U.S. professional sports, was revealed as a doper and a cheat by U.S. doping agency in 2012 through its posting of hundreds of pages, sworn testimony and other proof on its website in October 2012.
One issue with Armstrong always was whether Armstrong led the doping problem in cycling or whether he was just part of a larger doping problem that existed in cycling when he turned professional.
The Lance Armstrong era began more than 25 years ago. Armstrong began as a triathlete when he was 16. He switched and became a full-time professional cyclist with the Motorola Cycling Team after the 1992 Summer Olympics. Armstrong had immediate success, decisively winning the 1993 World Championship as well as stage wins in the Tour de France in 1993 and 1995.
Armstrong’s professional cycling career was significantly derailed in October, 1996, when he was diagnosed with advanced testicular cancer.
In 1998, Armstrong rejoined the professional cycling ranks as a member of the U.S Postal Team. He raced for the Postal Team from 1998 and 2005. Armstrong won the Tour de France every year from 1999 to 2005 before retiring in 2005. Armstrong came out of retirement to race again in 2009 before finally retiring for good in 2011.
For virtually the entirety of Armstrong’s professional career, the professional cycling peloton was mired in a widespread doping epidemic. Performance enhancing drugs were a part of professional cycling almost since its beginning, first with more traditional aids like caffeine before transitioning to illegal drugs, blood transfusions and blood boosters.
At the time, Armstrong turned professional, EPO, a blood booster often prescribed to cancer patients, was becoming a popular performance enhancer in the peloton.
Armstrong and his teammates have acknowledged using EPO, blood transfusions and other forms of doping. This cheating occurring during Armstrong’s Tour de France wins as well.
Any accusations against Armstrong with regard to cheating during his professional career never stuck to the Tour de France champion until his former teammate, Floyd Landis, admitted to his own doping in 2010 and accused Armstrong and other teammates.
Landis’ accusations initially were investigated by the U.S. Justice Department and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, but neither agency proceeded to formal charges.
The U.S. doping agency took up the investigation shortly after the other DOJ and FDA dropped it, and in 2012, the agency formally charged Armstrong with doping. The potential penalty was a lifetime ban from all world doping agency-sanctioned sports.
Armstrong initially denied the charges, but quickly changed direction. In January 2013, Armstrong appeared on television with Oprah Winfrey and admitted to doping during his professional career.
Landis later filed a $100 million whistleblower lawsuit under the federal False Claims Act on behalf of the U.S. government in relation to the Postal Service sponsorship of Armstrong’s team, which Armstrong settled in April 2018, by paying approximately $6 million in settlement agreement.
With the final arbitration court ruling issued last week, the final unresolved matter of the Armstrong legacy has been completed. The entire arc of Armstrong’s career is now fully apparent, and the era of cycling’s biggest doping scandals is as well.
Cycling’s problems were simmering just below the surface from the 1960s through the 1980s. Various forms of cheating existed, but most were simply (if still harmful) chemicals that were ingested for a temporary boost in performance.
In the late 1980s to early 1990s, the drug EPO came on the scene and drastically altered cheating. EPO was a blood booster that increased the number of red blood cells in the human body.
This new, drastic form of cheating fundamentally altered pro cycling. No longer were we seeing cyclists competing hard, possibly with a stimulant in their systems. Now, we saw cyclists that had fundamentally changed their bodies.
Armstrong did not create EPO and was not the first to use it. Armstrong was an obvious participant, though, and the damage to cycling’s reputation will be felt for decades.
Professional cycling may be cleaner today, but fans still widely wonder if what we are watching is real cycling or just a different era of high-level doping.
James P. Moorhead is the founder and owner of the Moorhead Law Group LLC, a Chicago-based law firm with a national practice in commercial real estate, conservation and sports law. Among others, he advises tenants, landowners, athletes and sports businesses. He can be reached at jmoorhead@moorhead-law.com.