Fresh questions over Armstrong ‘triangle’ emerge
The UCI have admitted they accepted a donation of over $100,000 from Armstrong in 2002, but have strongly denied it was connected to any cover-up of a positive test.
Armstrong’s former US Postal teammate Tyler Hamilton has testified that Armstrong bragged he had managed to have a positive finding covered up.
Around the same time, the head of a drug-testing lab in Switzerland, admitted to meeting Armstrong and separately were also given free use of a blood analysing machine by the UCI.
Last week, a report by the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) labelled Armstrong a “serial cheat” and a bully who enforced “the most sophisticated, professionalised and successful doping programme that sport has ever seen”.
Dr Michael Ashenden — acknowledged as the foremost expert in blood doping — said there were clear conflicts of interest.
He told BBC Radio Five Live programme Peddlers — Cycling’s Dirty Truth: “The UCI should never have accepted money from Armstrong... But if they took money after they were aware there were grounds to suspect Armstrong had used EPO, it takes on a really sinister complexion.
“We know Armstrong paid the UCI more than $100,000 and around that time the UCI gave the Lausanne laboratory free use of a blood analyser worth $60,000 to $70,000.
“That’s what I mean by a triangle: the laboratory meets with Armstrong, all of this takes place at about the time that Floyd Landis and Tyler Hamilton said... that Armstrong bragged he had managed to have a result covered up.”
Dick Pound, the former president of the World Anti-Doping Association said the UCI could have made greater efforts to catch drug-taking cyclists.
“The UCI have always been in a difficult position and their behaviour has not always been what you would hope it to be. There was certainly generalised knowledge that there had been some payments from Armstrong to the UCI.”
Emma O’Reilly, who was Armstrong’s assistant in the 1990s told the BBC programme she was used as a “drug runner” when working for the US Postal team. She travelled to Spain to pick up pills from US Postal team director Johan Bruyneel before returning to France with them for Armstrong.
On Friday, Bruyneel quit as general manager of the RadioShack Nissan Trek team, choosing to contest the USADA charges.
