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The Australian cycling fraternity on Friday closed ranks around retired rider Stuart O’Grady after he admitted to using the banned blood-doping substance EPO in the run-up to the 1998 Tour de France.
O’Grady, a six-time Olympian who this week finished a record-equalling 17 Tours, was expelled by the Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) from its 10-member Athletes’ Commission after he ignored a call to resign in atonement for using erythropoietin (EPO).
“Athletes’ Commission members are chosen for their qualities of integrity and leadership and by his admission Stuart does not deserve to be a member of that group,” AOC President John Coates said in a statement.
O’Grady’s Australia-based ORICA-GreenEDGE Team issued a statement saying “the past shouldn’t be allowed to tarnish his entire career and his integrity as a person.” Last year GreenEdge sacked Matt White as its sports director after he admitted doping when he was on Lance Armstrong’s US Postal team but reinstated him after six months.
GreenEDGE lauded O’Grady as “an advocate for a clean sport” despite the fact that the 39-year-old hid his drug use for 16 years.
Cycling Australia chief executive Graham Fredericks described O’Grady as “one of Australia’s most enduring road riders who appears to have made a poor decision which will regrettably now have an impact on the legacy of his career.” O’Grady has remained silent on his Twitter feed and could not be reached for comment. He is believed to be in Europe.
The cyclist, who could be stripped of his Olympic medals, confessed to using EPO after announcing his retirement this week and that he would not go for a record-breaking 18 Tours.
He told the Adelaide Advertiser he had sourced EPO himself and had taken it without telling his French team.
O’Grady won gold as a track cyclist at the 2004 Athens Games and in 2007 won the Paris-Roubaix one-day classic.
“All I’ve ever wanted in my career was to make Mum and Dad and my family proud,” he told the paper. “You win Olympics, Paris-Roubaix and now all of that is going to be tainted by this action and I wish it could be changed but it can’t.”
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