Stuart O'Grady is a lying drug cheat! (Cycling)

[kingwilly]

Stuart O'Grady admits to doping at 1998 Tour de France
BY:PETER KOGOY From:The Australian July 25, 2013 1:43AM


Stuart O'Grady has admitted to doping at the 1998 Tour de France after French authorities released a damning report on the race.

STUART O'Grady, one of Australia's most decorated road and track cyclists, last night confirmed he had taken illicit drugs while competing at the Tour de France.

One day after announcing he had retired after having led the Orica-GreenEdge team into Paris, having watched team-mates Simon Gerrans and Daryl Impey wear the yellow jersey, and winning the team time trial in Nice, the 39-year-old O'Grady was named by a French senate inquiry as one of 83 athletes to have returned positive or, in his case, "suspicious" blood readings from the 1998 Tour after having samples re-tested by the anti-doping authorities.

"I made a decision," he said. "I sourced it (EPO) myself, there was no else involved, it didn't involve the team in any way," O'Grady told News Corp journalist and Adelaide-based biographer, Reece Homfray.

"I just had to drive over the border and buy it at any pharmacy. The hardest part of all this is I did two weeks before the Tour de France."
A six-time Olympian and world champion on the track, O'Grady also revealed he had got rid of the doping product once police raided the Festina team's hotel during the race.

O'Grady, who has worn the yellow jersey and also finished runner-up in the green jersey multiple times, also confessed of his doping past to his parents, Brian and Faye, who were on the Champs Elysees in Paris on Sunday night to cheer home their son and the team.

"It wasn't systemic doping, I wasn't out to deceive people," he told Homfray.

"There is nothing more to hide, I have done everything since then on natural ability and when people ask: 'Why are you still racing?' I guess part of me deep down is to prove that you can do the Tour clean, win Olympic gold medals clean."

Among the riders found by the French senate anti-doping probe to have tested positive and in some cases more than once at the 1998 tour included the late Marco Pantani and Jan Ullrich.

Pantani and Ullrich finished first and second on the podium.

Pantani died of cocaine poisoning in 2004, while Ullrich has come forward and admitted his guilt.

This latest probe comes some eight months after the US Anti-Doping Authority found that seven-time winner Lance Armstrong had systemically doped throughout his career.

Tour de France organisers have since stripped Armstrong of his seven victories between 1999 and 2005.

The untitled O'Grady autobiography is slated to be in bookshops this November.

O'Grady declined to be interviewed when contacted by phone by The Australian, while neither Orica-GreenEdge team general manager Shayne Bannan nor media director Brian Nygaard returned phone calls.

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"now that you have all found out that I am a drug cheat, I will admit that I did it then. But now I am clean"

Sure, lying cvnt.

[kingwilly]

Stuart O’Grady’s admission to doping will trigger his removal from the Australian Olympic Committee’s athletes’ commission and has been condemned by an unsympathetic AOC.

After the four-time Olympic medallist was described as "an advocate for a clean sport" by the boss of professional cycling team Orica-GreenEDGE following his admission to doping before the 1998 Tour de France, AOC chief John Coates said Australian Olympians were entitled to be angry "knowing they had supported an athlete who had cheated".

O’Grady’s admission that he used blood booster EPO before the infamous 1998 race that was subsequently dubbed the "Tour du Dopage", after myriad scandals, follows his insistence he had nothing sordid to confess.

When O’Grady told Fairfax Media last December that he anticipated having several interviews with the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority in the aftermath of Lance Armstrong's downfall, he defended his reputation and described how ASADA had already "asked questions which I had absolutely no idea about".

In the same interview O’Grady told Fairfax Media: ''I am probably going to have another (interview with ASADA). I'm quite happy to talk about everything relevant, but … I've been around a long time because luckily I'm a gifted bike rider."

After Armstrong’s ruinous doping confessions, Australia’s professional road team Orica-GreenEDGE, owned by Victorian businessman Gerry Ryan, commissioned its own independent doping review. It followed the team’s decision to sack Matt White as a coach due to his admission to doping when he was a teammate of Armstrong’s.

White has since served a six-month suspension, issued by ASADA, and been reappointed to his coaching position at Orica-GreenEDGE.

Esteemed anti-doping expert Nicki Vance conducted extensive interviews with Orica-GreenEDGE riders and staff. An abridged version of her report was made public, but it has not been revealed whether any riders confessed to past doping sins in the forum.

While the AOC has written to O’Grady and asked him to resign immediately from the athletes’ commission he was voted onto at the London Olympics last year, Fairfax Media has been told that his position in the role is untenable due to AOC rules.

"Members of our London Olympic Team who elected Stuart to the Athletes’ Commission are entitled to be angry knowing they had supported an athlete who had cheated," AOC president Coates said on Thursday.

"Athletes’ Commission members are chosen for their qualities of integrity and leadership and by his admission Stuart does not deserve to be a member of that group."

After O’Grady was named as a "suspicious" rider from the 1998 Tour de France in a report produced in the French Senate this week the Australian admitted he had doped.

Orica-GreenEDGE, which had only recently publicised the re-signing of the veteran member of the fledging professional team, released a statement from general manager Shayne Bannan that said:

"ORICA-GreenEDGE supports Stuart O’Grady’s decision to step forward and place the findings of the French Senate Report of today into perspective regarding his own past."The team would also like to express its support in Stuart as a person and as an advocate for a clean sport. Like the majority of the riders in his generation, he was also exposed to the issues and wrongdoings of the sport and made some wrong choices in that environment.
"We would like to underline that in all of our interactions with Stuart, he has always been extremely clear about the right path for the sport and we believe that certain mistakes in the past shouldn’t be allowed to tarnish his entire career and his integrity as a person."

O’Grady completed a record-equalling 17th Tour de France last weekend before announcing suddenly that he had decided to retire. That announcement was soon followed by news he had been named in the report from the French Senate inquiry.

According to reports, O’Grady is claiming he sourced the EPO he used in 1998 himself and that he only used it for two weeks before the 1998 Tour de France

Read more: Stuart O'Grady's admission leads to expulsion from athlete's commission