Lance Armstrong Vindicated!

Last August, the French newspaper, L’Equip featured an article that told that Lance Armstrong was being investigated and that urine samples from 1999 tested positive for doping. Armstrong denied the charges and a number of the people on this blog defended him. Today, Dutch investigators concluded in a 132-page report cleared Lance Armstrong of all doping allegations. In Breitbart.com, there was an article that described the report.

Dutch investigators cleared Lance Armstrong of doping in the 1999 Tour de France on Wednesday, and blamed anti-doping authorities for misconduct in dealing with the American cyclist.

A 132-page report recommended convening a tribunal to discuss possible legal and ethical violations by the World Anti-Doping Agency and to consider “appropriate sanctions to remedy the violations.”

The French sports daily L’Equipe reported in August that six of Armstrong’s urine samples from 1999, when he won the first of his record seven-straight Tour titles, came back positive for the endurance-boosting hormone EPO when they were retested in 2004.

The International Cycling Union appointed Dutch lawyer Emile Vrijman last October to investigate the handling of urine tests from the 1999 Tour by the French national anti-doping laboratory, known by its French acronym LNDD.
Vrijman said Wednesday his report “exonerates Lance Armstrong completely with respect to alleged use of doping in the 1999 Tour de France.”

The report said WADA and the LNDD may have “behaved in ways that are completely inconsistent with the rules and regulations of international anti-doping control testing,” and may also have been against the law.

Further in the article, it stated that Vrijman also called for a further investigation on how the test results were leaked to L’Equip. It was pretty obvious even back in August that this was a last-ditch effort to smear Armstrong before he retired and having won the Tour de France an unprecendented seven times. I doubt that we’ll hear the outcome of this report from L’Equip or any of the other press vultures that wait to prey on the carcasses of fallen athletes.

With this last stain on Armstrong’s reputation removed, Lance Armstrong can rightfully take his place among the world’s greatest athletes.

Thanks to the Drudge Report for pointing out the article.