John Fahey (right) with former WADA President Dick Pound(Image credit: AFP)
US fans in 2002 going mad for Lance Armstrong(Image credit: AFP Photo)
John Fahey, President of the World Anti-Doping Agency says Lance Armstrong needs something close to a miracle to ever compete again. The seven times Tour de France winner lost all of his victories from 1998 onwards and received a lifetime ban from USADA last year. Fahey doesn’t believe that the information Armstrong may be willing to hand over is enough to have that ban reduced.
According to Fahey USADA is the only organization able to reduce the ban. “It has to be a damn good reason if USADA are to reopen the case," he said Tuesday.
Armstrong said he would cooperate with an enquiry into his past. He is willing to tell everything but demands he’ll be treated equally to any other doping confessor.
“Look, as far as I’m concerned, it’s done and dusted. Armstrong did what he did, we all know what that is. He did not co-operate, he did not defend the charges that USADA put out there last year and he was dealt with,” Fahey said at the WADA congress in South Africa.
“The proper process and the reasoned decision that was released by USADA was, to me, irrefutable,” Fahey is reported to have said. “Now, does he wish to come good and indicate to the world what he knows, not just about himself, perhaps, maybe about others? I don’t know.”
In February Fahey said that Armstrong’s ban could be reduced if he cooperated fully with USADA. “The only possible chance of something changing is if Lance Armstrong indicates to USADA that he will give evidence under oath. Not on some television programme, under oath and to the proper authorities and subject himself to proper cross examination, and if it's of substance, it might well be that USADA consider reducing the life term to a minimum of eight years."
“That’s a possibility but I see no indication of Mr Armstrong having any willingness to do that and I would be very surprised if he does. I'd love to see it but I’d be very surprised if it ever happened,” Fahey told Cyclingnews then.
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“You have to wonder, with time, just how valuable the information is that he may have,” Fahey added from South Africa. “But I see it as done and dusted and it would take something close to a miracle to see that changed.”
