November 23, 2006 — According to a recent Reuters report, Lance Armstrong announced his opposition to newly-proposed plans by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) to drop its procedure of taking two samples from athletes during anti-doping controls. The second sample, referred to as the “B sample”, is used to test the validity of positive findings.

“If the athletes are not protected and respected, and if their rights are not protected and respected, the process will never work,” Armstrong told Reuters. “For an athlete, being condemned for life because of a positive A sample finding is basically a death sentence. If there is no way (without B samples) for athletes to reestablish their innocence, we’re going to have a lot of innocent people on death row.”

Armstrong, a former pro cyclist who won the Tour de France seven times consecutively, is a part owner of the Discovery Channel team that recently hired Italian cyclist Ivan Basso for the 2007 season. Basso was among the cyclists implicated in the Operacion Puerto doping scandal, but the Italian Olympic committee recently dropped all charges against him. Armstrong himself has long been suspected of doping, and declared today that his team adopts a “zero tolerance” policy toward doping.

As reported last week by Pedal, the Châtenay-Malabry laboratory in France made a clerical error in labeling Floyd Landis’ B sample of urine following his controversial 2006 Tour de France victory. Just after Landis won the TDF, the laboratory announced that he had tested positive for testosterone.