Is Chris Horner a redacted name in USADA's Reasoned Decision?

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Vuelta winner: Chris Horner (RadioShack)(Image credit: Bettini Photo)

Statistically speaking, with 73 wins in a career dating back to the mid-1990s, Chris Horner now outranks the likes of Lance Armstrong, George Hincapie and Levi Leipheimer as the most successful US rider since Greg LeMond. That head scratching abnormality was even established before one counts Horner’s recent win in the Vuelta a España. It’s a staggering state of affairs and not one many would have predicted a year ago, let alone 20 years ago when the Okinawa-born Horner began racing.

The statistical anomaly is down to the fallout from USADA’s Reasoned Decision. The long investigation that brought down Lance Armstrong and his seven Tours saw a gutting of the US annals of history from the last quarter of a century. When the dust settled, the 41-year-old Horner was the last man standing from a generation that included Armstrong, many of his US Postal teammates and a host of other names.

That should be something to celebrate, right? Well, Horner is in fact named in the USADA Report. In Christian Vande Velde’s affidavit, a document Vande Velde signed under threat of perjury if he lied. In his statement, Vande Velde recalls that during the World Championships in Valkenburg, Holland, he was handed cortisone by Armstrong’s ex-wife before the start of the men’s road race. The USADA report lists the US men’s team from that race, however it doesn’t differentiate as to which riders were handed cortisone and which weren’t. However a source who participated in the race told Cyclingnews, ‘that the cortisone was just for the US Postal riders on the team’ a bracket Horner did not fit within, but something USADA did not make clear.

There has also been speculation that Horner is one of the redacted names listed in Levi Leipheimer’s USADA affidavit. Leipheimer was not available for comment, while USADA, when asked why names had been redacted, would only tell the website that, “Some names in the Reasoned Decision were redacted when the information was potentially part of an ongoing investigation and/or the information was not directly related to the Armstrong case.

When asked if Chris Horner was among one of the clean athletes USADA were trying to protect and stand up for, they told Cyclingnews, “From USADA’s perspective, all athletes are innocent and presumed clean, unless and until it is determined through the established legal process that they have violated the rules. Any attempt to speculate or insinuate that any person has doped, outside of the established process, is a disservice to the process, fair play and to those who love clean sport.”

Last December, in the face of USADA 1,000 pages of evidence, the Vuelta winner told Cyclingnews: "I understand and I'm clear on how much information is out there on what Lance is said to have done but I'm also clear on the fact that he's passed all of his tests. Are you supposed to go back and erase those memories? I remember the 2005 Tour de France and Lance was the best guy there and he passed all the tests and won the Tour. I'm not going to debate if he won, he was there, he won and passed the tests."

Daniel Benson was the Editor in Chief at Cyclingnews.com between 2008 and 2022. Based in the UK, he joined the Cyclingnews team in 2008 as the site's first UK-based Managing Editor. In that time, he reported on over a dozen editions of the Tour de France, several World Championships, the Tour Down Under, Spring Classics, and the London 2012 Olympic Games. With the help of the excellent editorial team, he ran the coverage on Cyclingnews and has interviewed leading figures in the sport including UCI Presidents and Tour de France winners.