Armstrong asked to return Olympic medal

US Olympic Committee also informed of IOC’s decision.

LAUSANNE: The International Olympic Committee (IOC) have asked disgraced American cyclist Lance Armstrong to return the Olympic bronze medal he won at the time-trial event at the 2000 Games in Sydney.

According to IOC spokesperson Mark Adams, the Committee had written to Armstrong to ask him to hand back the medal. The IOC had to wait for world cycling’s governing body to sanction Armstrong, which it did on December 6 last year, and the following three weeks in which the Texan had recourse to appeal at the Court of Arbitration for Sport. The US Olympic Committee, to which Armstrong must theoretically return the medal, has also been informed.

Armstrong was stripped of his seven Tour de France titles and banned from the sport for life in October last year after the US Anti-Doping Agency produced evidence of widespread doping by him and former teammates.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 18^th, 2013.