Lance Armstrong has been accused, by one of the world’s leading anti-doping experts, of still lying about claiming to have ridden “clean” during his comeback to cycling in 2009.
Armstrong confessed to Oprah Winfrey last week that he claimed each of his Tour de France titles between 1999 and 2005 under the influence of performance enhancing drugs. But then he stated that he didn’t use these steroids during his third place finish in 2009.
However this was contrary to scientific evidence against the disgraced 41-year-old, which was amassed by the United States Anti-doping Agency in a 1,000-page report.
When Dr. Michael Ashenden, who helped with the project, was asked by the BBC if Armstrong was still lying about his statement, he responded, “yes.” Ashenden is an authority on blood doping, and in the past has acted as an expert witness in a number of sporting cases.
Talking about Armstrong’s biological passport, which is an individual athlete’s record of blood values, he said, “The passport is best suited as a monitoring tool, to help guide anti-doping authorities toward those athletes with suspicious results. In extreme cases, where the variations (from the riders’ established norms) are quite radical, the evidence can support a doping violation on its own.”
He also added, “But most times, results are either natural or suspicious, so the passport helps the testers focus on the suspicious ones.”
Armstrong has stated that he is “really upset” by the agency’s claim that he still using the dope in 2009, but they have said there is a “one in a million” chance that his blood value would have developed these unusual high levels of immature red blood cells, which helped his performance, naturally.
