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Lance Armstrong names names

Who knew about his drug use, who supplied them? Quite a lot of people who've denied it, says Lance...

Disgraced former professional cyclist Lance Armstrong has consistently refused to name those involved in supplying him with performance-enhancing drugs. But it has emerged that he gave written answers in a case brought against him by an insurance company last November revealing who knew about his doping, who provided the drugs and who delivered them.

Armstrong names his suppliers as coach Pepi Marti, Dr. Pedro Celaya, Dr. Luis Garcia del Moral and Dr. Michele Ferrari.

Three people are named as having delivered performance-enhancing drugs to Armstrong: masseur Emma O’Reilly, mechanic Julien de Vriese and motorcycle courier Philippe Maire, previously known as ‘Motoman’.

Who knew? Armstrong alleges that those aware of his doping included team manager Johan Bruyneel, who has denied being involved.

“Johan Bruyneel participated in or assisted with Armstrong’s use of PEDs, and knew of that use through their conversations and acts,” Armstrong states.

According to a report by Brent Schrotenboer of USA TODAY Sports, Thomas Weisel, the financier behind Armstrong’s U.S. Postal Service team was also aware of doping on the squad, as was former Olympic track cyclist Mark Gorski, who served as general manager at the team’s holding company Tailwind Sports.

Another former professional cyclist, Chris Carmichael, is also mentioned as having known of Armstrong’s doping as early as 1995.

Founder of Carmichael Training Systems, Carmichael is the author of several books on coaching and was frequently cited as Armstrong’s personal coach during the period when Armstrong won seven Tours de France. He was subsequently stripped of those titles.

The revelations came in answers Armstrong provided under oath during a dispute with Acceptance Insurance, the company that paid $3 million in win bonuses for his 1999-2001 Tour de France victories.

But those answers were not publicly available until Wednesday, when they were filed by lawyers for Floyd Landis in Landis’  federal whistleblower suit against Armstrong.

That suit was settled in November, for undisclosed terms, one day before Armstrong was due to give a deposition in the case.

Before the US Anti-Doping Agency’s Reasoned Decision stripping Armstrong of his Tour de France titles and most of his other results, those sceptical about Armstrong’s performances believed there was a doping ‘mastermind’ behind them.

These answers again indicate that mastermind was Armstrong himself.

In one response, he said “Armstrong would typically supervise his own use of PEDs, but on certain occasions, the use of PEDs was supervised by Dr. Celaya, Dr. del Moral, or Dr. Ferrari.”

Neverthless, he said: “Johan Bruyneel participated in or assisted with Armstrong’s use of PEDs, and knew of that use through their conversations and acts.”

And others knew, including Thomas Weisel, who has denied the claim. Armstrong said: “Mr. Weisel was aware of doping on the USPS team.

“As for Mr. Gorski, it is Armstrong’s belief that he was aware of doping by the USPS team. Mr. Armstrong told Chris Carmichael in 1995 of his use of PEDs.”

Armstrong once again denied using drugs during his 2009 and 2010 comeback.

He also denied specifically paying hush money to keep his doping secret.

“Armstrong has not paid or offered to pay someone to keep his or others’ doping a secret,” he said. “However, Armstrong has, on occasion, provided benefits or made contributions to many people and institutions, some of whom may have been aware of, or suspected Armstrong’s use of performance-enhancing drugs and banned methods. Armstrong never provided any such benefits or contributions with the intent for it to be a payoff to keep doping a secret.”

 

John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.

He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.

Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.

John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.

He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.

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9 comments

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iaguilera | 9 years ago
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Lance and and his team were using, as well as other teams, why is it a big deal? how many other riders have been convicted? why aren't they under the microscope? why can't we just leave Armstrong be?

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giobox | 9 years ago
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Is that "motoman" fellow Philippe Maire still emphatically denying being the team drug mule? Both Armstrong and Tyler Hamilton have named him now.

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felixcat | 9 years ago
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We may have known or suspected that these people were involved but I think it is a significant development to have Armstrong's confirmation. Some of us were pretty sure of his guilt before his confession to Oprah but it was still possible for his diehard fans to maintain he was innocent. Bruyneel for instance was not proven guilty, just suspected. I had never read anything about the complicity Weisel, Carmichael and Gorski. I feel that there are some fans of cycling who want to close their eyes to the extent of the rot in cycling. If the sport is going to be cleaned up this time (as it never was in previous scandals) the truth is important.

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OldRidgeback | 9 years ago
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More legal schmegal: I expect a lot of lawyers are going to be getting rich.

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levermonkey | 9 years ago
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Any chance of us learning something new? I'm certain I've heard all this before.

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mikeprytherch | 9 years ago
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Its alright saying he has not really named-names, but surely there are no more names ? we know pretty much everybody involved already, all he can do now is confirm they were in on it.

Its good, this is a start, once the flood gates open like this more detail will come out, its the start if putting all of this to bed.

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Paul J | 9 years ago
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No links to the relevant articles?

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atlaz | 9 years ago
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So he's not really named-names. He's just repeated things people already know or at least expected.

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morethansonglyrics | 9 years ago
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“Johan Bruyneel participated in or assisted with Armstrong’s use of PEDs, and knew of that use through their conversations and acts,” Armstrong states.

3rd person chatting. What a lovely man.

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