Armstrong says Olympic medal headed back to IOC

LOS ANGELES - Agence France-Presse

Disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong (L) says he has sent back his Olympic medal nine months after the International Olympic Committee demanded it back. REUTERS photo

Disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong has handed over his 2000 Olympic bronze medal to US Olympic officials, nine months after the International Olympic Committee demanded it back, he said on Sept. 12.

“The 2000 Bronze is back in possession of @usolympics and will be in Switzerland asap to @Olympics,” Armstrong said on Twitter, posting a photo of the medal. USOC spokesman Patrick Sandusky confirmed on Twitter that the American body had the medal.

“I can confirm that The United States Olympic Committee has received the bronze medal awarded to Lance Armstrong at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney,” Sandusky said.

Bronze medal

“The International Olympic Committee and the USOC had previously requested that the medal be returned. The USOC has made arrangements to return the medal to the IOC.”

Thomas Bach, who was elected president of the IOC in Buenos Aires on Sept. 10, had revealed a day earlier in his role as head of the IOC judicial commission that Armstrong had yet to return the medal.

The IOC had written to Armstrong, who was third in the time-trial event in Sydney, in January to ask him for it.

The IOC had to wait to punish the American until world cycling’s governing body, the International Cycling Union (UCI), sanctioned Armstrong, which it did on December 6 last year.

It then had a further three-week wait in which the Texan had recourse to appeal his lifetime doping ban at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). Armstrong was stripped of his seven Tour de France titles and banned from the sport for life in October, 2012, after the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) produced evidence of widespread doping by him and his former teammates.