Travis Tygart, the anti-doping investigator who brought down Lance Armstrong, has told The Times that he feels “sorry” for the disgraced former champion and has given the clearest indication yet that the American’s lifetime ban may be rescinded.
“I think Lance walked into a really tough culture, as all those athletes did in the 1990s,” Tygart, chief executive of the US Anti-Doping Agency (Usada), said. “The people that should have protected them, and their right to compete clean, failed to do that.”
Tygart said that he had sympathy for athletes, such as Armstrong, who had competed through the years of chronic doping, as documented in the recently published Cycling Independent Reform Commission (CIRC) report.
“I feel sorry for athletes, including Armstrong, who faced that culture,” Tygart said. “I think that culture has shifted dramatically, but in 1998 there was no World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada), and Usada didn’t open our doors until after the Sydney Olympic Games [in 2000].
“I can’t imagine how difficult it was for these young riders, including Lance, to enter the peloton at the time that they did. I think if you know athletes and care about them, it’s really tough to blame it all on them.
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“Some made the choice not to do it, and had to leave the sport and their talents weren’t revealed, but that said, it was such a difficult period of time. Usada’s goal was to hold accountable those that oversaw that culture, because they are by far more culpable than the young athlete who has a dream.”
Tygart said that the CIRC report revealed that “decisions that the International Cycling Union (UCI) leadership were making were counter to clean sport and the culture, to a certain extent, did not give athletes much of a choice.” Tygart described the peloton’s culture of doping at that time as “a horrible situation”.
“In order to compete and win in any of the races, you had to be on a pretty sophisticated programme,” he said. “A few people got caught, but a lot escaped detection, so to our minds, that culture made it really difficult for athletes.”
Usada banned Armstrong for life in 2012 after exposing the doping programme that had propelled the Texan to seven consecutive Tour de France triumphs. Tygart said that dialogue between Armstrong and Usada was continuing, but as yet there was no definitive indication that the shamed rider’s lifetime ban would be reduced.
“We’ve been open to him coming in and technically there’s an opportunity for a reduction in the ban,” he said. “We’ve been in touch with his people since 2012, through 2013 and 2014, so we’re hopeful that something will happen.
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“Until he makes the decision to come in and sit down and try and answer everything, it’s just speculation. Any reduction is based on the information provided.”
Tygart said that, after four years, any athlete subject to a lifetime ban would be able to compete in lower levels in sports that he, or she, was not sanctioned from.
“I’ve always been hopeful that he was going to do the right thing and I was pleased that he talked to CIRC,” Tygart said. “We’re firm believers in redemption and second chances for athletes, including Lance — absolutely.”
Tygart also branded claims, published in the CIRC report, that 90 per cent of present riders are doping, as “ridiculous”. The anonymous claim, made by a witness cited in the CIRC report, caused anger and resentment among the peloton, Geraint Thomas, of Team Sky, describing it as “insulting”.
“They might as well have said ‘something between zero to 100 per cent of riders are doping,’ ” Tygart said, before questioning the objectivity of some of CIRC’s witnesses.
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“Those who have been caught doping often seek to justify their own position by saying, ‘Everybody else did it,’ ” he said. “The athletes in the peloton today deserve to be presumed innocent and free of doping. Every athlete deserves to be viewed as clean until something changes to prove they have committed a violation.”
Tygart was also critical of the report’s lack of understanding of cycling’s complex history and longstanding ethical malaise. “It’s the problem when you have people that don’t live and breathe the sport,” he said.
“Part of the report was very ‘ivory tower,’ ” Tygart said. “It was the CIRC’s first brush talking to real live athletes about what actually goes on. But their job wasn’t to do what independent anti-doping organisations do, to bring cases. It’s tough when that’s not part of the endgame.”
But Tygart praised CIRC’s research into the past practices of Hein Verbruggen and Pat McQuaid, the former UCI presidents. “They clearly got evidence from the emails and data that were seized at the UCI,” he said. “That was a really smart and pro-clean athlete thing to. It took some resolve, to come in and seize all of that. That clearly led to more actionable evidence.”
The road ahead
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Brian Cookson, the UCI president, announced further anti-doping measures yesterday to combat drug use in cycling. These include:
• Developing a fit-and-proper person test for team management
• Updating the banned product list, in conjunction with Wada
• Introduction of night-time testing in special cases
• Further studies into the prevalence of doping
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• Independent whistleblower programme
• Tighter controls on Therapeutic Use Exemptions, or TUEs
• Stricter sanctions and larger fines on teams with a record of doping