Pound still wants answers from Armstrong
World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) chief Dick Pound has said that a reprimand from the International...
World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) chief Dick Pound has said that a reprimand from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) will not prevent him from seeking answers to the allegations from L'Equipe regarding retroactive testing of Lance Armstrong's urine samples from the 1999 Tour de France. "If Lance thinks this is going to make me go away he is sadly mistaken," Pound told Reuters yesterday.
"These are documents. This is an accredited laboratory that found EPO in [Armstrong's] urine from 1999 and it's been matched with forms you signed so if the analysis is right and the forms aren't forgeries you may have something to explain," said Pound. "He [Armstrong] has done nothing about the L'Equipe article and has done nothing except complain about me for some unknown reason. I've said those are the facts."
The IOC Ethics Commission has already said that it should "remind [Pound] of the obligation to exercise greater prudence... when making public pronouncements that may affect the reputations of others." But Pound, a Canadian lawyer, believes that the UCI still needs to look into the allegations.
"The UCI knows 15 samples showed EPO and six of them have been linked with [Armstrong], there are another nine that the UCI knows who they are that they aren't doing anything about," continued Pound. "It's there for the UCI to deal with. They may conclude it is not sufficient or they might conclude it was eight years ago and we're not going to do anything about it."
Armstrong was cleared of any wrongdoing in May last year after the UCI's appointed independent lawyer Emile Vrijman found that testing protocols had been violated during the investigation. The seven time Tour winner, who has previously called for Pound's exit from WADA, recently said, "It's not common that the IOC comes out and issues a reprimand or a warning about one of their members at all." Armstrong also called Pound a "clown" who is an "absolute disaster when it comes to giving interviews."
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