The reason for targeting Armstrong seems to be that he was the most successful cyclist of the period. Yet, that seems an arbitrary and unfair criterion:[/B] why not pursue accusations against cyclists who came 2nd, 9th or 15th in Grand Tours? We could develop that further and argue that anti- doping investigations should really be universal rather than individual – all cyclists should be treated with the same energetic focus, not just the one that is successful, unpopular and making a return to the sport. Researcher Kathryn Henne recently claimed there was a certain disproportionate focus on Armstrong:
Having ethnographically studied the anti-doping regime since 2007, I can attest that nearly every anti-doping official I have met has gone on record saying that ‘catching’ Armstrong would be the anti-doping movement’s crowning achievement.
That is not the only way in which Armstrong has been treated differently. In all other cases where a doping accusation is upheld, there is some substantial evidence. The most common form of evidence is a positive test which is confirmed by testing a ‘B’ sample, and which is scientifically validated by an accredited laboratory. As noted already, there is now scope to retrospectively test samples as far back as eight years. A second type of evidence is a confession, which is most common in situations where a police investigation is being conducted. If an athlete is asked by a journalist or a sports authority if they doped, they can deny without any punishments. However, if they deny in a police investigation and are later found guilty they can be prosecuted for perjury, as happened with Marion Jones. The Scottish cyclist David Millar denied doping under interrogation by the French police for almost 48 hours before eventually giving in.
Confessions are hard to achieve and need to be produced in very specific circumstances. Until the Lance Armstrong case, no athlete was publicly accused by a sports authority unless there was either a positive test or a confession to support the accusation. In these circumstances, USADA took a significant risk in collecting witness statements to pursue a case for which there was little legal precedence. Their officials must have done so because of a specific determination to catch Armstrong. Given the lack of ‘normal’ evidence, they could have left the matter alone, but instead devoted significant resources and took significant policy risks in order to achieve their goal. However, they would not have had the details and the confidence had not the US Federal Inquiry into the financing of the US Postal Team’s doping culture not begun and subsequently collapsed. The Inquiry had the power to subpoena individual cyclists, and after evidence was collected from several team members, the suspicions surrounding Armstrong were becoming public. The momentum was gathering but the Inquiry came to a halt because there was insufficient evidence to pursue a criminal case. At this stage, there was not enough supporting evidence: no positive test, no confession and no possibility of a criminal court case, USADA and WADA could have abandoned the accusation on the basis of lack of evidence, but instead the focused determination to catch Armstrong inspired more investigative work. As mentioned above, Kathryn Henne found that anti-doping staff working on professional cycling had consistently expressed a desire to catch Armstrong. Journalists felt frustrated that the fragments of evidence did not amount to a convincing case against him. However, armed with the Federal Inquiry’s evidence, USADA decided to keep pursuing Armstrong. It seems that their CEO Travis Tygart was not willing to let the seven-time Tour de France winner off the hook. It is not clear if this was a personal vendetta or witch-hunt as Armstrong claimed, but certainly it seems a dogged pursuit which did not have to be undertaken. However, we should not be tempted to look solely at individuals (such as Tygart and Walsh) when in fact the wider development processes that enabled anti-doping policy were central to the unfolding outcomes of this affair. There may have been some other influencing factors that pressurised USADA. One was that Armstrong was competing in other sports – mountain biking, triathlon and marathons – where the competitors and spectators did not tolerate suspicions of doping that had been tolerated in professional cycling. Perhaps by venturing into other areas, Armstrong unwittingly helped those who wanted to see him removed from all sports. If he had not returned in 2005 to a cleaner cycling culture and not competed in cleaner sports, he might have simply been seen as the best cyclist of a certain time period when most top cyclists were dopers and he was never caught so no accusations could stick. Instead, his desire to prove himself as an athlete in the broadest sense contributed to his eventual downfall. The fact he made enemies of important people and that USADA was determined to prove its capabilities, and that doping increasingly became a public interest story, were the other factors involved. We now know that he was doping through most of his career, but history would have told a different story had not these specific factors that – in combination with the macro- and micro-level developments already discussed – tightened the net around Armstrong.
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