Armstrong Planning to Race Despite Injury

Two-time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong broke a vertebrae in his neck when he collided with a car last month but still plans to race at the Sydney Olympics.

“He’s going to lose some fitness from this, obviously,” Dan Osipow, a spokesman for the U.S. Postal Service pro cycling team, said Tuesday.

The injury, which caused Armstrong to drop out of two upcoming races in Europe, was detected Monday after he had an MRI exam at a clinic in Monaco. Armstrong, 28, is scheduled to compete in the Olympic road race Sept. 27, and the individual time trial, where he is among the favorites, three days later.

He still plans to compete in the GP des Nations, a time trial event, Sept. 16.

After that, Armstrong will make a final decision on whether to ride in Sydney.

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China is cutting 40 athletes and officials from its Olympic team, including seven rowers who failed drug tests, IOC medical director Patrick Schamash said.

“I’m very pleased. I’m very happy. This is very good news. It shows the new system for detecting doping substances will work very well,” IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch said.

The IOC recently approved blood testing for the first time, in hopes of catching athletes using the endurance-enhancing drug EPO.

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U.S. swimming coaches urged even more drug testing to ensure fair competition at the Games.

“If that takes 1,000 tests a week, then we ought to devote the funds to that instead of maybe traveling first class and staying in first-class hotels at our meetings,” U.S. men’s Coach Mark Schubert said.

Schubert said out-of-competition drug testing of his top-ranked team has been almost nonexistent since April. Coach Richard Quick said female swimmers have gone untested for months.

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Australian swimmer Kieren Perkins, a two-time gold medalist, lashed out at American swimmer Gary Hall Jr.--who served a ban for marijuana use in 1998--as a “drug cheat.”

Perkins, who has won the 1,500-meter freestyle in the past two Olympics, was reacting to a column written two weeks ago by Hall that boasted the Americans “will smash them like guitars.”

“I don’t take a lot of notice of drug cheats so you know, don’t worry about him,” Perkins said. “He got suspended, didn’t he? It’s fact then, there you go.”

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Hammer thrower Robin Lyons, 23, was dropped from Canada’s Olympic team after a positive test for the anabolic steroid norandrosterone, the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport said. She denied any wrongdoing and will appeal. . . . Olympic gold medalist swimmer Jenny Thompson hurt her right thumb and cut short a training session, but said it will not threaten her Olympic campaign. . . . After staying even for 10 minutes and leading by only 11 points at halftime, the U.S. Olympic men’s basketball team opened the second half with an 18-0 run to beat Spain, 95-66, at the Super Dream Games 2000 in Saitama, Japan. . . . Lisa Leslie and Natalie Williams had 21 points apiece as the U.S. Olympic women’s basketball team beat France, 75-59, only six hours after arriving in Adelaide, Australia. . . . Plans for athletes from North and South Korea to march together during the opening ceremony of the Sydney Olympics have failed to materialize, although there’s still a chance it could happen.