Q&A: Tygart on Lance Armstrong, death threats and catching the cheats

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USADA chief Travis Tygart (R) shakes hands with Senator Arlen Specter at a 2009 hearing in Washington, DC about screening dietary supplements for illegal steroids.(Image credit: AFP)

It's been just over a year since USADA released their Reasoned Decision into the doping practices utilised by Lance Armstrong and his US Postal team.

A year on and the sport has seen a number of monumental and subtle changes. The UCI has replaced Pat McQuaid with a new leader, and the Irishman's successor, Brian Cookson, is promising an investigation into the governing body’s previous behaviour. Meanwhile WADA have been drafting a new version of their own code, while USADA’s CEO Travis Tygart has been locked in cases still unresolved from the Reasoned Decision.

Travis Tygart: It didn’t have any effect on our program budgets. It was all within budget. It cost us right around $356K, $150K of which was spent defending the frivolous law suit that was filed against us. Through 2012, on a cost per case basis,it’s been far less than the average per-case cost to resolve other cases that result in sanctions. That figure ($365k) is for the whole cycling investigation, not just the final Reasoned Decision. That’s a lot lower than what some people have reported as ‘tens of millions of tax payer’s dollars’. Out of the total cost, less than $50K was spent from funds that we received from the Federal Government.

TT: It’s all based on the evidence. Our powers are limited and we act on evidence that’s provable in court, not innuendo or speculation. We move as fast as we possibly can to obtain the evidence and when it’s in the arbitration phase, it’s up to the independent judges, not us. It’s also up to the defense councils and whether they want to file motions to delay the presentation of the facts. We were also hopeful that the UCI would provide a mechanism by which the information that we believe is out there would be more readily obtained. That hasn’t happened as quickly as we wanted it to, but we’re hopeful that it’s going to happen.

TT: We don’t comment on speculation or innuendo. We don’t confirm or deny because otherwise journalists would then send us a list asking for us to confirm that rider 10 isn’t this rider or that rider 19 is this rider and before it’s all over there’s a list of riders who people speculate might fit the list. Out of respect for the process every rider is entitled to the presumption of innocence until proved otherwise by the legal process.

TT: The evidence in the Reasoned Decision demonstrates that the US Postal Service team ran the most sophisticated, professional and successful doping program we had ever seen, but what is important now is holding the UCI accountable to fulfill its promise to take decisive action so the sport can actually break free of the past. It is vital we all remain focused on the effort to permanently clean up the sport's culture for the good of all the current clean athletes and the future generations of cyclists.

CN : What tangible success have you noticed and gained in the last 12 months? Is the sport of cycling cleaner, for example?

TT: We believe that athletes have more hope now than ever before that they can compete clean and win, and that they know that there are independent organizations here to protect their rights. We have seen a change in the UCI leadership happen which sends a strong message that those who love the sport, including clean athletes, want real action to be taken and will not settle for more of the same. We also know that there are a lot of people who care about clean sport that were extremely frustrated and concerned that it has now been a year since the previous leadership of UCI promised to take action to clean up the sport and then did nothing, but we are hopeful and confident that the new leadership will take that action and the sport will be able to move forward.

CN: Hope isn’t really tangible, you can’t measure that. I’m talking about hard facts, perhaps in testing results, riders coming forward and congratulating you.

TT: Let’s start at the top of the sport. The leader who oversaw and who was in place and when this dark, broad drug culture took over is gone. Primarily because he oversaw the sport during that period and secondly because he failed to take adequate steps to ensure and put a process in place to make sure that it never happened again. That alone is a monumental moment that should give clean athletes significant hope that their rights are going to be protected going forward. Outside of that, we hear from loads of athletes all the time. I got an email from a 15-year-old cyclist yesterday, thanking us for giving him hope that if he ever makes it to that level he’s not going to need to cheat or that if he felt that he had to, he now believes that there’s an avenue through independent organizations that he can turn to, to help to protect the clean culture.

TT: In hindsight we had concerns going back to the Hamilton case in front of CAS in 2005, about how the UCI handled his situation. We were overly disappointed with their lack of cooperation in the Landis case and while they appeared to sit silently, they were not helpful at all in obtaining documents that we needed for the case, allowing additional test data to take place, and we began to see how they would not aggressively go after the truth in those particular situations.

Then we came to 2010 when all this information, all this Landis information came out and they were suing him, attacking him and others who came forward. We attempted, and frankly the Tour of California, wanted us to as an organization, to provide independent testing. During that period we began to hear more and more about how inept the UCI testing program was. We worked with AEG and we had in place agreements to do the testing but then at the last minute the UCI pulled the rug out from all of it.

So the relationship with the UCI further deteriorated as they attempted to stall and attack us at every turn during the cycling investigation, with assisting with the frivolous lawsuit and at the Olympic Games, where they attacked us and our board of directors in a press conference. They were not interested in the truth, only in protecting themselves. And now look, they’ve been held accountable for that and anyone who values clean sport can take great satisfaction that the rights of the clean athletes, in cycling going forward, are going to be upheld.

TT: We hear allegations all the time. Our job is to follow up with them and obtain the truth. If I had the quid pro quo of corruption from the leaders of the UCI in that time period we would provide it through the proper process. And certainly whether it’s bringing cases against those that were responsible for the system or otherwise ensuring that the ethics and the laws are upheld, we would act on that.

TT: I’m not speculating. I’m just saying that they announced that they were going take decisive action to put in place a process to clean it up for future generations. We said that we support that and that we’re ready to participate if it’s a genuine process. That openly went nowhere and all we’ve said is that their failure to do that ultimately led to their ousting. We think that is a good thing for clean athletes.

TT: A lot of people talk and speculate and provide general information about cultures but our job is to hear that and follow up on it when it’s appropriate. At the end of the day, our decisions and our impressions and conclusions come down to evidence. We believed and wanted to believe in Armstrong’s accomplishments until we could believe no more. That happened at the point when we obtained the evidence in the summer of 2010 and moved forward.

TT: It’s the totality of it. You hear the allegations from Floyd and the specifics and the level of detail. That was relatively quickly confirmed but we continued to investigate to see ultimately how it played out. It was the most powerful case of doping that we’d ever had. It’s all of it together, the consistency and the number of specific incidents and eye-witnesses. All of it together creates an undeniable picture. That was 2012 when we brought the case, when it all came together.

TT: As they should be. Look I don’t like it any more than anyone else. Major League Baseball has had to deal with the same issue. I think every culture that’s taken over by drugs unfortunately has to cross that bridge. While no one likes it, we certainly don’t either; it’s not an excuse to turn a blind eye to it. What I’d like a lot less and what angers me a lot more is all the athletes who had to leave the sport who weren’t willing to use the drugs, or those who were harassed and intimidated because they weren’t willing to use the drugs, and didn’t have success. Those are the people we ought to be more concerned about.

TT: The statute is eight years unless there’s been fraudulent concealment. We said we should go back to 1998, Festina forward, to shed light on that generation and try to get all those who competed, and some before, but certainly that time period, until today. Those who learned to win by doping in that time period, who are now still in the sport, we have to do our best to clean out that system. Expose their behavior, have sanctions when that’s appropriate, because if they’re still in the sport, and many of them are, and they only won by doping, they are more likely to dope in the future if they feel they got away with it.

TT: Again I can’t comment on the redacted names. You know the sport well enough to know that there are people, some who have admitted it, and some who haven’t, who participated in doping in the past. That’s why we’ve pushed since the summer of 2012 and then renewed our call for it after our Reasoned Decision, for a truth and reconciliation process that finally allows the sport to clean itself up and unshackle itself from its immediate past of corrupt drug abuse and try and move forward and give hope to everyone who loves the sport. Especially all the clean athletes who want to compete in the sport and not have to use drugs to be successful.

TT: I think it’s a resource issue. Being able to have the ability to convince athletes from a preventative standpoint that we’re going to protect their rights is a resource issue. So if we had the sort of arsenal that a winner of the Tour de France had we would be in a much better position to protect athletes’ right. The amount of money coming into sports and going to those who win is huge. At some point we just have a harder time battling those influences and that natural desire of overly competitive athletes to do whatever it takes to win.

TT: I think the incentive to cheat is only going up as more money is spent on the winners in global sport. That’s the reality of the forces we’re battling. But at the end of the day I firmly believe that athletes don’t want to have to use drugs to be successful. We have to maintain and develop the science. You see new pools of research money, we roughly have $3 million going to research and you finally have people who appreciate what happens if you don’t protect the rights of clean athletes. Sport otherwise becomes a complete fraud and people don’t like to see sport that’s not played by the rules.

TT: No. You don’t like them and you hate having to sit down with your kids and warm them about why we have security outside of our house and why we have to do things differently in travel. It angers us as parents having to do that, and our staff here. We shouldn’t have to go through it. But at the end of the day, that is part of the oath that we swore to protect clean athletes, we have to have the resolve to endure those things. We don’t like it, but we’re happier it’s aimed at us and not others. We wouldn’t be doing our jobs if we let those things scare us off and stop us from doing what we have to do.

Daniel Benson was the Editor in Chief at Cyclingnews.com between 2008 and 2022. Based in the UK, he joined the Cyclingnews team in 2008 as the site's first UK-based Managing Editor. In that time, he reported on over a dozen editions of the Tour de France, several World Championships, the Tour Down Under, Spring Classics, and the London 2012 Olympic Games. With the help of the excellent editorial team, he ran the coverage on Cyclingnews and has interviewed leading figures in the sport including UCI Presidents and Tour de France winners.