A day after a judge dismissed Lance Armstrong's lawsuit against the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, the group has issued lifetime bans to three former members of the cyclist's team, the Associated Press reports.
The USADA on Tuesday announced the lifetime ban of two doctors and a trainer from Armstrong's U.S. Postal Service cycling team for participating in a "sophisticated, far-reaching doping conspiracy" during the team's run of seven consecutive Tour de France titles.
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"Permanently banning these individuals from sport is a powerful statement that protects the current and next generation of athletes from their influence, and preserves the integrity of future competition," USADA CEO Travis Tygart said in a statement.
The USADA alleges that Dr. Luis Garcia del Moral, Dr. Michele Ferrari, and trainer Jose "Pepe" Marti injected, procurred, and in Ferrari's case, developed, performance-enhancing drugs for cyclists.
While Moral and Marti are accused of facilitating doping, the USADA claims Ferrari "developed a distinctive mixture of testosterone and olive oil to be administered under the toungue to assist in recovery during races," which riders referred to as the "oil."
All three are banned from all sports over which the USADA presides, including U.S. Olympic and Pan-American sports.
The USADA's ban came a day after a Texas judged dismissed Armstrong's lawsuit against the agency, which charged the cycling star of doping throughout his career. U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks' dismissal, obtained by USA Today, stipulated that Armstrong's complaint was self-serving, insufficiently factual, and excessively long.
"The Court is not inclined to indulge Armstrong's desire for publicity, self-aggrandizement, or vilification of defendants, by sifting through eighty mostly unnecessary pages in search of the few kernels of factual material relevant to his claims," the judge said.
The opinion orders that Armstrong submit an amended complaint within twenty days before the case is closed.
The USADA contends that 10 former teammates of Armstrong's can testify that he doped, and says it has blood samples "fully consistent" with doping. Armstrong maintains, as he has throughout his career, that he has never doped and has passed more than 500 drug tests to prove it.
Seth Cline is a reporter with U.S. News and World Report. Contact him at scline@usnews.com or follow him on Twitter.
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