Michele Ferrari, the former doctor of disgraced US cyclist Lance Armstrong, has denied accusations that he was a key figure in the doping scheme, he said in statement posted on his website Wednesday.
The Italian was handed a life ban in July by the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), which in August issued a life ban to Armstrong and stripped him of his seven Tour de France victories.
In the wake of USADA’s revelation of more than 1,000 pages of evidence in a report last week to the International Cycling Union (ICU), Armstrong stepped down Wednesday as chairman of the Livestrong cancer charity and was dropped by sponsor Nike. A total of 26 witnesses, 11 of them former Armstrong teammates, testified against Armstrong and many of them cited incidents involving Ferrari, who denied any wrongdoing in his website post, which was entitled “USADA Conspiracy?”
Among those who testified against Ferrari were US riders Levi Leipheimer, George Hincapie, Floyd Landis, Tyler Hamilton, Christian Vande Velde and Tom Danielson. “The false accusations that the six cyclists… threw at me are all based on ‘visual’ testimonies of each of the six witnesses telling of events that concerned only me and the ‘witness’ himself,” Ferrari wrote on 53×12.com. “They never evoke the presence of another witness, whether between the six or other persons who may corroborate the veracity of their claims. “An exception is the declaration of Landis on page seven of his affidavit when he says: ‘George Hincapie also had blood drawn by Dr. Ferrari in my presence.’ Too bad that Hincapie, in his affidavit, makes no reference to this serious charge.”
Ferrari denied that his professional relationship with Armstrong lasted after 2005, even though he admitted that he might have met and ridden with Armstrong and accepted payments from him, as USADA claims, more than $1 million from 1996 to 2006. “I do not exclude that we may have met (his riding group and mine) on the roads… but I deny that I had a professional relationship with Armstrong,” said Ferrari. “The dossier documented payments of Lance Armstrong to Health and Performance SA (a company for which I worked as a consultant) in 2005 and 2006: simply, those are delayed payments for consultancy in previous years.” USADA cites 2009 e-mails between Armstrong and Ferrari’s son Stefano asking if Armstrong could make a $25,000 cash payment when they next met. Ferrari said that was for training advice offered through Ferrari’s website from his son. “My son who administers the website offering online training advice to athletes, was in charge of the training of Lance Armstrong, under my supervision, as is the case with all his customers,” Ferrari said.
