STORYLINE:

UCI President Pat McQuaid told SNTV on Monday (22nd October) that he believes the Lance Armstrong scandal will "become history very quickly" as he insists the sport is much cleaner now.

SCRIPTING INFORMATION:

International Cycling Union (UCI) President Pat McQuaid took part in a news conference in Geneva, Switzerland on Monday in the wake of the Lance Armstrong doping controversy.

McQuaid confirmed that Armstrong is to be stripped of his seven Tour de France titles and banned from the sport for life following a report from the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) that accused him of leading a massive doping program on his teams.

McQuaid also announced that the federation accepted the USADA's report on Armstrong and would not appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

The decision clears the way for Tour de France organisers to officially remove Armstrong's name from the record books, erasing his consecutive victories from 1999-2005.

Tour director Christian Prudhomme has said his organisation would go along with whatever cycling's governing body decides and will have no official winners for those years.

The USADA had said that Armstrong should be banned and stripped of his Tour titles for "the most sophisticated, professionalised and successful doping program that sport has ever seen" within his U.S. Postal Service and Discovery Channel teams. He also loses all race results achieved since August 1998.

The USADA report said Armstrong and his teams used steroids, the blood booster EPO and blood transfusions. The report included statements from 11 former teammates who testified against Armstrong, including that he pressured them to take banned drugs.

Armstrong denies doping, saying he passed hundreds of drug tests. But he chose not to fight USADA in one of the agency's arbitration hearings, arguing the process was biased against him. USADA's report, released earlier this month, was aimed at showing why the agency ordered the sanctions against him.

Former Armstrong team director Johan Bruyneel is also facing doping charges, but he is challenging the USADA case in arbitration.

While drug use allegations have followed the 41-year-old Armstrong throughout much of his career, the USADA report has badly damaged his reputation. Longtime sponsors Nike, Trek Bicycles and Anheuser-Busch have dropped him, as have other companies, and Armstrong also stepped down last week as chairman of Livestrong, the cancer awareness charity he founded 15 years ago after surviving testicular cancer which spread to his lungs and brain.

Armstrong's astonishing return from life-threatening illness to the summit of cycling offered an inspirational story that transcended the sport.

However, his downfall has ended "one of the most sordid chapters in sports history," USADA said in its report published two weeks ago.

If Armstrong's Tour victories are not reassigned there would be a hole in the record books, marking a shift from how organisers treated similar cases in the past.

When Alberto Contador was stripped of his 2010 Tour victory for a doping violation, organisers awarded the title to Andy Schleck. In 2006, Oscar Pereiro was awarded the victory after the doping disqualification of American rider Floyd Landis.

The USADA also thinks the Tour titles should not be given to other riders who finished on the podium, such was the level of doping during Armstrong's era.

The agency said 20 of the 21 riders on the podium in the Tour from 1999 through 2005 have been "directly tied to likely doping through admissions, sanctions, public investigations" or other means. It added that of the 45 riders on the podium between 1996 and 2010, 36 were by cyclists "similarly tainted by doping."

The world's most famous cyclist could still face further sports sanctions and legal challenges. Armstrong could lose his 2000 Olympic time-trial bronze medal and may be targeted with civil lawsuits from ex-sponsors or even the U.S. government.

McQuaid said the UCI's board will meet on Friday (October 26) to discuss the OIympic issue and whether to update other race results taking account of Armstrong's disqualifications.

SHOTLIST:

Aigle, Switzerland - 22nd October 2012

1. 00:00 - Various cutaways of news conference

2. 00:05 - SOUNDBITE: (English), Pat McQuaid, UCI President:

"This is not the first time that cycling has reached the crossroads - or that it has had to begin anew and engage in the painful process of confronting its past. So again, with renewed vigour and purpose and its stakeholders and fans can be assured that it will find a new path forward. The UCI wishes to begin that journey on that path forward today by confirming that it will not appeal to the court of arbitration for sport and that it will recognise the sanction that USADA has imposed. The UCI will ban Lance Armstrong from cycling and the UCI will strip him of his seven Tour de France titles. Lance Armstrong has no place in cycling."

3. 00:56 - Cutaways

4. 01:13 - SOUNDBITE: (English), Pat McQuaid:

"For Lance Armstrong, make no mistake it is a catastrophe for him - he has to face up to that, that is his problem. What we have to do is deal with the evidence that was in the USADA file. We saw the evidence, we read the evidence and we really had no option but to make the decision we made. For the sport, I think the sport can look upon this as another - and I won't say a turning point - because it is another turning point where the sport has got to move forward and the sport has got to take what it can from this and bring it into the sport of today and tomorrow. That's what my intention is - to try and take from this and use it as a means to convince athletes that there is no future in doping."

5. 02:00 - SOUNDBITE: (English), Pat McQuaid:

"We haven't tried to defend an icon in our sport, we haven't tried to find a way to defend an icon in our sport. We've accepted reality, we've accepted the facts and the facts are there. We will continue to do that - I'm a pragmatic person and I believe that no matter how bad a situation may be, you take the decision you have to take and you move forward from there."

6. 02:22 - SOUNDBITE: (English), Pat McQuaid:

"I think the teams of today and the pro-teams and the pro-continental teams of today and the young athletes coming into the sport, the new generation of athletes - the Richie Portes, the Geraint Thomas' - and they are a little behind the Mark Cavendish and the Bradley Wiggins' and the Nibalis of this world and the TJ van Garderen or whatever and so forth. These are the sort of riders that are sitting and looking at what's going on, looking at what's happening and they are saying to themselves, 'I never want to be involved in anything like this, I never want to be near anything like this' and they are the riders that are the future of our sport and they are the riders that will bring our sport forward."

7. 03:03 - SOUNDBITE: (English), Pat McQuaid (on probe launched by Padua investigators in Italy into alleged doping):

"We may do. We are waiting for the results of that case. I've only read some speculative stuff about it at the moment. We are waiting for it and let's see what happens. Whatever is in there we will deal with it within the rules, within the body of evidence we are given. You are right, it's another element but it's another element from a period of time that the anti doping fight is a lot weaker than it is today. Although having said that there maybe evidence in the Padua affair of doping activities in recent years, again trying to beat the system. We'll deal with it and we will move forward and hopefully the sport - I have no doubt the sport will survive. You only have to look at the popularity of the sport and the sport will remain popular even after this affair today. Once this affair is over it's done with, this will become history very quickly."

SOURCE: SNTV