Armstrong doping disgrace sad: Rogge

LAUSANNE (AFP) –

International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Jacques Rogge at the Geneva Press Club in Geneva, on June 14, 2011. Lance Armstrong‘s doping scandal was both disappointing and sad, Rogge told AFP Thursday.

Lance Armstrong’s doping scandal was both disappointing and sad, International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Jacques Rogge told AFP Thursday.

Rogge – who steps down as president in September after 12 years in charge – added that if the American was truly contrite he could in future act as an example to younger cyclists.

Armstrong had already been stripped of his seven Tour de France titles and his 2000 Olympic bronze medal before making his personal confession to American talk show host Oprah Winfrey last week.

“Armstrong’s is a sad story but one has to take this as an opportunity,” Rogge told AFP in an exclusive interview conducted at IOC headquarters in Lausanne.

“It is a pivotal moment for cycling.

“There is a new spirit within cycling. The fight should be intensified in terms of the role the entourage has played.

“The athletes are not the only ones implicated in doping.

(Left to right) Lance Armstrong, ASO president Patrice Clerc, IOC president Jacques Rogge and UCI president Hains Verbrughen at the Tour de France between Les Deux-Alpes and La Plagne, 24 July 2002.

“The entourage gives bad advice to the athletes.”

Rogge, who has made the fight against doping one of his major policies during his presidency, said it would be important how Armstrong conducted himself in the aftermath of his guilt admission,

“If he shows remorse and contrition as he appeared to do in the interview it would be a good example for younger cyclists,” he said.

Rogge, who refused to comment on senior IOC member and former WADA chief Dick Pound’s remark that cycling could be excluded from the Games, said the doping by Armstrong and fallen athlete Marion Jones was easier to escape undetected then.

“I cannot condone the culture at the time but in those days there were flaws in the dope testing methodology,” he said.

“There was not a very solid test for EPO nor a test for Human Growth Hormone, where the athletes were so they could be tested out of competition and no blood-doping test.

“All those are in place now. Most importantly we have the judicial authorities in foreign countries helping us and above all the biological passports which is a very powerful weapon against doping.”

Rogge, who said he hoped cycling’s governing body, the International Cycling Union (UCI), and WADA would mend the fences between each other, said it was premature for people to be looking at UCI president Pat McQuaid to resign over the Armstrong affair or for his predecessor Hein Verbruggen to step down from the IOC.

“Calls for resignation are only valid once guilt has been proven,” he said.

“First the investigation then the judgement and then the punishment, not the reverse order.”