Former seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong has admitted to using performance enhancing drugs, but Jacksonville native and United States Anti-doping Agency CEO Travis Tygart says there is more work to be done.
"We are hopeful that he is going to come in. We firmly believe that he has got information on the complicity of the sport and others around him and we really believe they have to be held accountable," said Tygart, a 1989 Bolles School graduate.
Tygart was the featured speaker of an event hosted Wednesday by Driver McAfee Peek & Hawthorne and Merrill Lynch at The River Club.
Although the agency's prosecution of the internationally recognized Armstrong might have grabbed headlines and brought Tygart's name into the
international conscience — the latest being his April 25 testifying in front of the French Senate — he explained Armstrong was only part of the bigger picture of the prevalence of blood doping in the sport of cycling.
Blood doping is a method of improving athletic performance by artificially boosting the blood's ability to bring more oxygen to muscles, according to WebMD.
"It was never a Lance Armstrong case, although the media has attempted to characterize it that way. It was always following the truth about the evidence that we had received," said Tygart.
In 2010, three years after he became CEO of the U.S. Anti-doping Agency, the agency discovered its first piece of evidence.
Cyclist Floyd Landis admitted to blood doping after disputing allegations for nearly four years after his 2006 Tour de France win.
"For years he had not tested positive, just like other athletes, because of the sophistication in which they use these drugs. He gave us an inside glimpse to a deep and broad culture of doping where if you were an athlete in the sport and you wanted to compete, you had to use some performance enhancing drugs," said Tygart.
The agency in 2010 postponed its investigation into the sport of cycling when it learned the U.S. Department of Justice was investigating Armstrong. The department decided to close the investigation in 2012, clearing Armstrong of any wrongdoing.
"The decision was announced February of 2012, the Friday before the Super Bowl, and we had to anticipate an Olympic Games coming up," said Tygart.
Tygart said he didn't want to tarnish the U.S. Olympic team by allowing "dirty cyclists" to compete at the London games, but knew that would be a strong possibility if the agency didn't continue its investigation.
"The cycling team for the Olympics was going to be named in June and we knew from what Landis told us that there were going to be athletes on our 2012 Olympic team who were going to go, were going to win medals and evidence was going to come out later of their doping and their medals would have to be returned," said Tygart.
He said he also knew that if he investigated other members of the U.S. Postal Service cycling team that Landis was a part of, the investigation would eventually lead to Armstrong.
At that point, the agency identified two goals: prevent athletes using performance enhancing drugs from becoming a part of the Olympic team and "to dismantle the system that allowed this dirty culture to survive."
Lifetime bans from the sport have been issued to athletes, coaches, trainers and doctors as a result of the agency's investigation — and more are to come, Tygart said.
"The general theme that will be a lasting legacy from the Lance Armstrong case is that playing fair is the only way to truly win," said Tygart.
The title of his presentation was "Competing fair and winning," which was a discussion of integrity, ethics and brand protection.
"I think to a certain extent, our brands, your businesses, are built on reputations. Hopefully your reputations are built on a core value of integrity and some ethical principal," said Tygart.
He spoke about how Armstrong went from the top of the world to "a very bad place" because of the decisions he made to build his brand on fraud.
He also advised businesses to develop a mission and vision statement before a crisis.
"I know if we attempted to figure out what our mission was, what our vision was, during a crisis like the U.S. Postal case, there is no way we would have gone forward on it because there was way too many reasons to not go forward," said Tygart.
"We could have easily talked ourselves into the wrong decision. We went back to that principle that our entity had committed itself to. We are here for athletes and the integrity of sport," said Tygart.
He said he not only wants to maintain a level playing field for athletes regulated by the agency, but also wants children who are watching athletes to know they can win without cheating.
"This win-at-all-costs culture, unfortunately, does trickle down to the lower levels of sport," said Tygart.
In illustrating his point, he talked about 14-year-old Corey Gahan who accepted a two-year suspension from competitive inline speed skating in 2006 for use of testosterone, nandrolone and hCG, which were provided by his father, John Gahan.
"Coaches rank as the number one influence on kids who play sports. It's a shame our country doesn't have any formal processes on how to train coaches to be good mentors, good influencers," said Tygart.
The agency is a nonprofit organization based in Colorado Springs.
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