Tour de France director against reassigning Armstrong’s victories

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The director of the Tour de France Christian Prudhomme has said he is in favour of not reassigning victories in the Tour de France following the massive amount of evidence uncovered by the USADA investigation into Lance Armstrong and his teams.

Armstrong won the Tour de France seven times between 1999 and 2005 but has since lost those victories following the verdict and sanctions issued by USADA.

Under UCI rules, the second placed rider is usually awarded victory. However, ASO opted to put an asterisk next to Bjarne Riis’ name after he confessed to doping when he won the 1996 Tour de France.

“What we want is that there is no winner. We cannot be indifferent to what USADA unveiled this week, it's a damning picture.” L’Equipe reports Prudhomme as saying.

“This is the questioning of a system and also of an era that will forever be tainted.

"Surprising as it may seem from the outside, the organizers do not their records ,” he said, while also praising the efforts cycling has made in recent years.

“It is these difficulties that has built the current anti-doping efforts,” he said. “Cycling and the UCI, as supervisor of this struggle, were pioneers.

"The biological passport, the number of controls and their targeting, means they are more and more effective, so that the cheaters are caught quicker and quicker. We must continue on this path. There is no other way possible.”