Timeline: Armstrong’s doping allegations

With the United States Anti-Doping Agency today releasing of its report on performance enhancing drugs used by Lance Armstrong and the U.S. Postal team, years of speculation and accusation perhaps come to a close. Here’s a brief – and thus incomplete – timeline of doping charges and allegations against Armstrong.

1999: Speculation of PED use emerges in French press during Texan’s first Tour de France victory. Christophe Bassons, a French rider who admitted to doping after the Festina Affair of 1998, writes about doping being rife in the peloton. Armstrong tells a television interviewer that Bassons “would be better off going home.”
After Armstrong tests positive for a small amount of corticosteroid, masseuse Emma O’Reilly claims his team US Postal acquires a pre-dated prescription for a steroid-based ointment to treat saddles sores he didn’t have.

1999-2004: Armstrong and US Postal train with Michele Ferrari, an Italian doctor associated with EPO distribution. Ferrari has a lifetime ban from professional sports from July 2012.

2004: David Walsh and Pierre Ballester’s book LA Confidential accuses Armstrong of taking PED’s, claiming that Armstrong admitted as much to his doctors when undergoing treatment for cancer, and that O’Reilly removed several used syringes and supplied makeup to hide Armstrong’s needle marks.

2005: After winning his record 7th consecutive Tour de France, French newspaper L’Equipe alleges that Lance tested positive for EPO at the 1999 Tour. By May 2006 the re-testing process of Armstrong’s six 1999 urine samples in question is deemed below standards and flawed.

2010: Former US Postal teammate and compatriot Floyd Landis, who admitted to doping after protracted denials upon losing the 2006 Tour title for testosterone use, accuses Armstrong of being a drug cheat as well.

2011: Armstrong denies doping allegations from another American ex-Postie Tyler Hamilton, who, like Landis, came clean about his own PED use after a long period of denial.

2012: February: US federal prosecutor Jeff Novitzky drops investigation into Armstrong doping.
June: The USADA begins legal proceedings against Armstrong, ex-US Postal manager Johan Bruyneel, Ferrari and other USP team trainers and doctors.
July: Armstrong files two consecutive lawsuits in US federal court for a temporary restraining order against the USADA.
August: Armstrong’s legal action against the USADA is dismissed in court. Armstrong announces that he won’t fight agency’s doping charges while maintaining his innocence. USADA declares lifetime ban of Armstrong from World Anti Doping Agency-code sports and the erasure of his results from August 1, 1998.
October: Australian anti-doping scientist Micheal Ashenden claims that Armstrong’s 2009 blood profile shows manipulation indicative of blood doping.
October 10: USADA releases 1000-page report to the UCI and WADA with testimony from eleven of Armstrong’s former teammates and “direct documentary evidence including financial payments, e-mails, scientific data and laboratory test results.” The agency also suspends American riders Levi Leipheimer, Christian Vande Velde, David Zabriskie, Tom Danielson, along with the recently retired duo of American George Hincapie and Canadian Michael Barry who both immediately admitted to doping.