EXPOSED: Lance Armstrong’s Tour de France victories will be erased from the books — and his marathon results may be next. (
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Lance Armstrong was stripped of his seven Tour de France titles — and lost another commercial sponsor — yesterday as the cycling world continued to reel from his massive doping scandal.
“Lance Armstrong has no place in cycling. He deserves to be forgotten,” said Pat McQuaid, president of the International Cycling Union, the sport’s governing body known, as the UCI.
Tour director Christian Prudhomme said Armstrong should pay back his prize money, estimated to be nearly $4 million.
And a Texas insurance firm, SCA Promotions, threatened to sue Armstrong for a bonus, believed to total $7.5 million with interest, that it paid him in 2004.
There was no immediate response from Armstrong, who has heatedly denied cheating.
On Sunday, he told 4,000 riders at a fund-raiser for his Livestrong charity that the last few weeks have been “very difficult.”
“I’ve been better, but I’ve also been worse,” the cancer survivor said.
Prudhomme said the 41-year-old American would be written out of the record book — leaving a seven-year hole with no tour winner listed from 1999 to 2005.
“For us, very clearly, the titles should remain blank,” he said.
The UCI endorsed the recommendations of the US Anti-Doping Agency, which earlier this month cited evidence from 11 of Armstrong’s old teammates to make the case that he was at the heart of a cheating conspiracy.
“I was sickened by what I read in the USADA report,” McQuaid said.
Also yesterday, sunglasses maker Oakley said it was dumping Armstrong, joining sponsors Nike and Anheuser-Busch, which ditched him last week.
And the Dutch financial giant Rabobank said it was ending its sponsorship of professional cycling entirely after 17 years.
Even Armstrong’s New York City Marathon results in 2006 and 2007 will likely be removed by race organizers, Bloomberg News reported.
Armstrong finished 856th in 2006, clocking in at 2 hours, 59 minutes, 36 seconds. He ran at 2 hours, 46 minutes and 43 seconds in 2007, finishing 214th.
In past doping scandals in cycling, substitute winners were given the tour title.
But re-awarding Armstrong’s seven is problematic because 13 of the 14 second- or third-place finishers from 1999 to 2005 have also been implicated in doping.
“There must be more action to combat the system that took over the sport,” USADA CEO Travis Tygart said.