Armstrong, who has been stripped of his seven consecutive Tour de France wins (1999-2005), indicated earlier that he was willing to talk to an independent commission set up by the UCI to probe cycling’s doping past. Cookson hopes that the commission, working with a budget of 3 million Swiss francs ($3.7m CDN), will be concluded “within a year.”
Cookson strongly underlined that his office will not be calling the cyclist and that the onus is on Armstrong to set things moving here. And this is not the UCI’s jurisdiction; any decision on reducing Armstrong’s ban would be made by the agency that handed out his sanction – the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) in conjunction with the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). But Cookson said that if a deal with Armstrong could be reached that USADA and WADA were happy with, he would be happy as well.
Armstrong was considered by many to be the “big fish” caught by the doping investigations of the early 2000s. That he is now being offered possible clemency or leniency in return for cooperation with further investigations suggests that there are other “big fish” who have not been caught from that same time period. The names of former UCI presidents Hein Verbruggen and Pat McQuaid have been suggested by some as being guilty of complicity with the Armstrong Affair.
Cookson also spoke about Danilo Di Luca, the Italian rider who won the Giro in 2007 and has since been banned for life for EPO use. In a television interview from which excerpts were published this week, Di Luca said it was impossible to finish in the top 10 at a Grand Tour without doping. Cookson termed the Italian rider “a throwback to an earlier time,” but also called upon the Italian to explain his remarks before CONI, the Italian Olympic committee. Meanwhile several riders who raced at the Giro dismissed Di Luca’s claims.
Di Luca spoke not only about doping with drugs, but also mechanically. He claimed that small, “undetectable” electric motors on bicycles made their appearance in the peloton about five years ago and can deliver around 150 watts of power. A Dutch news team with the Bureau Sport agency tested such an apparatus with former Dutch national champion Michael Boogerd on January 7 as shown in an online video. In part of that video, a journalist on the stealth electric-assisted bike almost effortlessly drops Boogerd (who finished fifth at the 1998 TdF) on a steep hill.
Sidney Morning Herald
<http://www.smh.com.au/sport/cycling/lance-armstrong-wont-get-a-special-invitation-to-doping-inquiry-uci-boss-20140123-31b6d.html?rand=1390454390604>www.smh.com.au/sport/cycling/lance-armstrong-wont-get-a-special-invitation-to-doping-inquiry-uci-boss-20140123-31b6d.html?rand=1390454390604
Video (mainly in Dutch but containing Michael Rasmussen interview in English) about mechanical doping
<http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=736980546312394&set=vb.401076749902777&type=2&theater>www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=736980546312394&set=vb.401076749902777&type=2&theater