Armstrong Calls for Pound’s Exit

Seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong says World Anti-Doping Agency Chairman Dick Pound ought to step down or be forced out, according to a lengthy Armstrong letter to the International Olympic Committee obtained by The Times.

“That’s not going to happen,” Pound said Friday in a telephone interview.

Armstrong’s eight-page letter dated June 9 was sparked by the release of a report earlier this month, commissioned by the International Cycling Union, or UCI, that purports to clear the cyclist of using performance-enhancing substances in the 1999 Tour de France. Armstrong has repeatedly denied the use of banned substances.

The report, led by Dutch lawyer Emile Vrijman, came in response to a French news account last August that six Armstrong urine samples from 1999 had tested positive in 2004 for the blood-booster EPO. Vrijman’s report asserts the tests were conducted so improperly at a French lab that they could not amount to “evidence of anything.” Armstrong said the Vrijman report “confirms my innocence.”

But WADA “completely rejected” Vrijman’s report, saying it “is so lacking in professionalism and objectivity that it borders on farcical.”

The June 9 letter marks the next turn. It alleges that the French lab’s “misconduct” came at Pound’s “direction and insistence” and asks the IOC to convene a “disciplinary commission” on the grounds that “this is a critical situation that requires decisive action.”

The letter goes on to say, “If the individuals responsible do not accept responsibility and yield their positions voluntarily, those individuals must be suspended or expelled from the Olympic movement.”

Armstrong timed the letter for consideration by the IOC’s policy-making executive board at its meeting next week at the IOC’s Swiss headquarters.

It remains uncertain if IOC President Jacques Rogge or the board will address the letter. IOC spokeswoman Giselle Davies could not be reached Friday for comment.

Neither Armstrong nor his longtime advisor, Bill Stapleton, could be reached for comment.

The IOC, while it has extensive links with UCI as one of the more than two dozen sport federations involved in the Summer Games, holds no formal sway over the Tour de France. Pound, a former IOC vice president, said of Armstrong’s letter: “This is not a matter in which the IOC is involved at all. It’s a UCI and WADA matter, and they should resolve whatever differences there are between them.”