The board of the International Cycling Union (UCI), cycling’s governing body, has asked Lance Armstrong to return the money he earned by winning seven consecutive Tour de France races between 1999 and 2005. UCI is also demanding money back from other cyclists implicated in the United States Anti-Doping Agency’s (USADA) recent report on the use of performance-enhancing drugs, but Armstrong has won by far the most; over those seven years, he took home nearly $4 million. “UCI is determined to turn around this painful episode in the history of our sport,” UCI President Pat McQuaid said. “We will take whatever actions are deemed necessary by the independent commission and we will put cycling back on track.”
Following its Friday meeting in Geneva, the UCI board also announced that it plans to appoint an independent body to investigate its relationship with Armstrong. This measure is seen as a response to incidents in the USADA report that implicate the UCI in Armstrong’s doping. For example, “former Armstrong teammates Tyler Hamilton and Floyd Landis,” the New York Daily News points out, “both testified that Armstrong had told them that he had tested positive for EPO at the 2001 Tour of Switzerland鈥攁nd that UCI officials had agreed to ignore the positive test.” McQuaid said that the Union has never accepted bribes.
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