UCI to announce decision on USADA's Armstrong findings on Monday

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Over a week after USADA published its reasoned decision on the Lance Armstrong case, UCI president Pat McQuaid will formally state the governing body’s position on matter at a press conference in Geneva on Monday at 1pm local time.

The United States Anti-Doping Agency delivered its reasoned decision on the lifetime ban of Lance Armstrong to the UCI last Wednesday in the form of a 1,000 page dossier that detailed systematic doping practices at Armstrong’s former US Postal Service team.

Armstrong declined to contest USADA’s charges in August and he has been stripped of all results from August 1, 1998, including his seven Tours de France. The UCI had 21 days from the receipt of the file in which to decide whether to ratify the USADA decision or appeal the matter to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

Tour de France organisers ASO have already intimated that they no longer recognise Armstrong as the winner of the 1999-2005 Tours, but at the Tour of Beijing last week, UCI president McQuaid refused to be drawn on commenting on the matter.

“It would be wrong of me to pre-empt or second-guess what our lawyers are going to advise us about it, so that’s as much as I want to say about it,” McQuaid said in Changping.

McQuaid’s predecessor Hein Verbruggen has been somewhat less circumspect, telling De Telegraaf in a text message that: “All I can say is that there are many, many stories and suspicions, but no trace of PROOF. There is none. LA [Armstrong] never tested positive, not even by USADA.”

As well as formally accepting or rejecting USADA’s Armstrong findings, the UCI will also reveal whether or not it accepts the reduced six-month bans USADA handed to Christian Vande Velde, David Zabriskie, Tom Danielson, George Hincapie, Michael Barry and Levi Leipheimer in return for their testimony on the doping programme operated at US Postal.