Lance Armstrong's former team manager slapped with 10-year ban by USADA

Lance Armstrong

Lance Armstrong’s ex team manager Johan Bruyneel has been banned for 10 years for his involvement in providing performance-enhancing drugs to Armstrong. Apar from Bruyneel, Armstrong’s doctor Pedro Celaya and trainer Pepe Marti have also been banned for 8 years each.

On Tuesday, the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) established the participation of the doctor and trainer in encouraging Armstrong’s doping. The punished three all worked for Armstrong’s US Postal Service team.

“The evidence establishes conclusively that Mr Bruyneel was at the apex of a conspiracy to commit widespread doping on the USPS and Discovery Channel teams spanning many years and many riders,” a USADA statement said. “Similarly, Dr Celaya and Mr Marti were part of, or at least allowed themselves to be used as instruments of, that conspiracy,” it added.

Armstrong was given a lifetime ban in 2012 after eventually accepting the usage of prohibited substances on an American TV show. Two other doctors, Luis García del Moral and Michele Ferrari, were given lifetime bans from skilled sports duty by USADA in 2012.

USADA claims this doping case to be, “the most sophisticated, professionalised and successful doping programme the sport has ever seen”.

“I do not dispute there are certain elements of my career that I wish had been different, nor do I dispute that doping was a fact of life in the peloton for a considerable period of time,” Bruyneel said on his website. “However, a small minority of us have been used as scapegoats for an entire generation. There is clearly something wrong with a system that allows only six individuals to be punished as retribution for the sins of an era,” he added.

It is believed that Bruyneel will seek a further appeal in the court. USADA claims that some of the drugs that were used included, “EPO, testosterone, human growth hormone and cortisone”.