UCI claims 'moral authority' to lead cycling

Mired in a crisis caused by the Lance Armstrong doping affair, the sport of cycling faces an uphill trek to regain credibility.

Still, cycling's top official said the sport can succeed despite the doubts of many, including anti-doping leaders who on Tuesday called for Armstrong-era officials to be removed.

"By the decisions we have taken (Monday) it has given us the moral authority,'' UCI President Pat McQuaid said after the UCI accepted the sanctions which stripped Armstrong of his seven Tour de France titles and all other race results since August 1998.

Skeptics still insist that the UCI protected Armstrong from scrutiny for many years, and was reluctantly forced to disown him by a devastating report published this month by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency. Across 1,000 pages of evidence, it detailed how Armstrong's teams used and trafficked banned drugs _ coercing some teammates into the conspiracy _ to dominate the Tour from 1999-2005.

"We really had no option but to make the decision we made,'' McQuaid said.

McQuaid's denunciation that Armstrong "deserves to be forgotten in cycling'' was surprisingly strong after the UCI had previously backed Armstrong's failed legal fight to deny USADA jurisdiction in the case.

"We haven't tried to find a way to defend an icon in our sport _ we've accepted reality,'' the UCI president told the AP.

"We've accepted the facts and the facts are there. I'm a pragmatic person and I believe no matter how bad the situation might be, you take the decision you have to take and move forward from there.

"The sport has to take what it can from this and use it as a means to convince athletes that there's no future in doping,'' McQuaid said.

On Friday, the future of cycling will be shaped at a meeting of the governing body's management committee. On the agenda: how to revise race results, including the 2000 Olympic time trial in which Armstrong won bronze; possible efforts to recoup Armstrong's prize money; handling riders' doping confessions; and restructuring the sport to guard against doping conspiracies.

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