Lance Armstrong, the seven-time Tour de France winner will be stripped of his titles and banned from ever competing in any form of competitive cycling games in the future after he announced Thursday he will no longer refute accusations that he was taking performance enhancing drugs.
The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) accused Armstrong of taking the drugs which led to him winning the Tour de France title seven times in succession from 1999 to 2005. USADA spokeswoman Annie Skinner said the agency would strip Armstrong of his seven titles and ban him for life from competitive cycling.
Armstrong, 40, said he is tired of fighting the allegations which have dogged his cycling career. He has consistently pointed to the hundreds of drug tests that he has passed as proof of his innocence during his extraordinary run of Tour titles stretching from 1999-2005.
"There comes a point in every man's life when he has to say, 'Enough is enough,'" Armstrong said in a statement posted on his website Lancearmstrong.com. He called the USADA investigation an "unconstitutional witch hunt."
"For me, that time is now. I have been dealing with claims that I cheated and had an unfair advantage in winning my seven Tours since 1999," he said.
USADA reacted quickly and treated Armstrong's decision as an admission of guilt, hanging the label of drug cheat on an athlete who was a hero to thousands for overcoming life-threatening testicular cancer and for his foundation's support for cancer research.
The USADA maintains that Armstrong has used banned substances as far back as 1996, including the blood-booster EPO and steroids as well as blood transfusions which all boosted his performance.
Armstrong retired from cycling in 2011 without being charged following a two-year federal criminal investigation into many of the same accusations he faces from USADA.
"It is a sad day for all of us who love sport and our athletic heroes," Travis Tygart, USADA's chief executive officer, said in a written statement.
"This is a heartbreaking example of how the win-at-all-costs culture of sport, if left unchecked, will overtake fair, safe and honest competition, but for clean athletes, it is a reassuring reminder that there is hope for future generations to compete on a level playing field without the use of performance-enhancing drugs," he said.
The USADA said in a letter to Armstrong , which was published in the Washington Post, that it has blood samples from 2009 and 2010 that are "fully consistent" with doping.
It also has at least 10 former teammates and colleagues of Armstrong who will testify he used doping drugs during races from 1999 to 2005.
