Cycling's world governing body will look into the possibility of recovering the official prize money from Armstrong's seven Tour de France victories, as well as stripping the American of his seven titles, if it endorses the USADA doping report.
Cycling's world governing body will look into the possibility of recovering the official prize money from Lance Armstrong's seven Tour de France victories, as well as stripping the American of his seven titles, if it endorses the USADA doping report.
The UCI has until October 31 to decide on its response. It is expected to endorse the report with the caveat that it denies allegations that it suppressed a positive test from Armstrong at the 2001 Tour de Suisse. The UCI also denies suggestions that it was "corrupt" and that donations of pounds 78,000 from Armstrong for the development of drug-testing equipment at the UCI were effectively "hush money".
Attempting to recover prize money would be uncharted territory for the UCI. At the Tour de France all prize money from the yellow jersey's winning team of nine riders is pooled and divided, and it could be that some whistleblowers, such as George Hincapie, who shared in all Armstrong's successes, could be asked to repay all or some of their winnings.
The Sky pool this year, for example, was 828,840 euros which saw each rider take home just over 92,000 euros. All other bonus payments and endorsements are separate.
The UCI has placed the responsibility for making its decision on the dossier with its top lawyer, Philippe Verbiest. The Belgian is the legal expert who took the Alberto Contador appeal case to the Court of -Arbitration for Sport for the UCI, which resulted in the Spaniard receiving a full two-year ban.
"We thought about using a bigger team, but it is almost impossible to get two lawyers to agree on any issue let alone getting them to agree on such a large document, which is itself prepared by other lawyers," a UCI spokesman said on Thursday. "So although it is a big task we have asked Philippe Verbiest to examine it alone for consistency and to report back.
"He has a full three weeks before the deadline, but the hope is that he can accomplish it quicker. We can make no other helpful comment until he has fully examined the 1,000 pages, if you include all the affidavits."
The UCI received the report by email late on Wednesday night, four hours after it had been posted on the USADA website. It intends either simply to endorse the report, if that is what Verbiest recommends, or to appeal against it to CAS if he significantly disagrees with the findings.
The allegations that the governing body suppressed a positive test were rigorously denied three years ago by UCI president Pat McQuaid and are currently the subject of a libel action between McQuaid, former UCI president Hein Verbruggen and sports journalist Paul Kimmage, following articles the latter wrote last year.
McQuaid again vigorously denied the allegations at the recent World Championships, insisting that there had been no cover-up and that the donations were fully minuted by the UCI and the money was accounted for in receipts. The case will be heard in Switzerland on December 12.
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