Olympics May Ax Cycling Over Armstrong Scandal

Sport needs time to clean up, IOC member says
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Jan 16, 2013 3:23 AM CST
Olympics May Axe Cycling Over Armstrong Scandal
Lance Armstrong waves after receiving the bronze medal in the men's individual time trials at the Summer Olympics in Sydney, 2000.   (AP Photo/Ricardo Mazalan, File)

Lance Armstrong's doping scandal could end up sidelining his entire sport from the Olympics, International Olympic Committee member Dick Pound warns. Armstrong—who confessed to doping in an Oprah interview set to air tomorrow—reportedly plans to implicate cycling's world governing body, which could leave the IOC feeling the need to take drastic action, Pound tells Reuters.

"We could say, 'look, you've clearly got a problem why don't we give you four years, eight years to sort it out,'" says Pound, a former head of the World Anti-Doping Agency. "And when you think you're ready, come on back (and) we'll see whether it would be a good idea to put you back on the program." The only way cycling is going to clean up "is if all these people say 'hey, we're no longer in the Olympics and that's where we want to be so let's earn our way back into it,'" he says, though action will probably have to wait until after the IOC presidential election this summer. (More cycling stories.)

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