Lance Armstrong’s heroic cycling career — which included a record seven Tour de France wins — was a monstrous lie, US anti-doping authorities said yesterday.
They released a devastating 164-page chronicle of Armstrong’s doping between 1998 and 2005, backed by thousands of pages of documents and testimony from 11 teammates.
“The US Postal Service Pro Cycling Team ran the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen,” US Anti-Doping Agency chief Travis Tygart said.
Armstrong was deeply involved in organizing the doping, and made clear to his teammates that they would lose their jobs if they didn’t go along, the USADA report says.
“He was not just a part of the doping culture . . . He enforced and re-enforced it,” the report says.
Even Armstrong’s most loyal lieutenant, Queens native George Hincapie, ratted him out to anti-doping probers.
Hincapie admitted he began doping early in his career, and said Armstrong gave him drugs. “It was not possible to compete at the highest level without them,” he said in a statement yesterday.
US Postal rider David Zabriskie had vowed never to dope because drugs destroyed his father’s life.
But driven to tears in 2003 by pressure from team bosses, Zabriskie caved. “I felt cornered. I had pursued cycling to escape a home life torn apart by drugs,” Zabriskie told USADA investigators.
The doping methods included blood transfusions and the drug EPO, which enhance performance by increasing red-blood-cell counts.
Armstrong’s lawyer called the report a “one-sided hatchet job.”
But Armstrong decided not to challenge the agency’s decision in August to strip him of his Tour de France titles and the rest of his pro cycling record. He could still appeal to the International Cycling Union, which has feuded with US officials over jurisdiction in his case.