Olympic chiefs will not reattribute Armstrong's bronze

LAUSANNE (AFP) –

A stencil graffiti depicting cyclist Lance Armstrong in a yellow jersey, the traditional garb of the seven-time Tour De France winner, attached to an IV drip, on the side of a building in Los Angeles on January 23, 2013. The International Olympic Committee said Wednesday that it would not reattribute the 2000 cycling bronze medal stripped from Lance Armstrong because of doping.

The International Olympic Committee said Wednesday that it would not reattribute the 2000 cycling bronze medal stripped from Lance Armstrong because of doping.

“It (the medal) will not be reattributed,” IOC vice-president Thomas Bach told AFP on the sidelines of a meeting of the organisation’s executive commission in Lausanne, Switzerland.

The IOC last month asked the disgraced cycling icon to hand back the Olympic time-trial bronze medal he won at the Sydney games in 2000 after he was stripped of his career record back to August 1998 for taking performance-enhancing drugs.

Armstrong was first accused of taking performance-enhancing drugs in a damning US Anti-Doping Agency dossier last October and said to have been at the centre of the most sophisticated doping programme in the history of sport.

He admitted in a television interview with chat show host Oprah Winfrey last month that he used a cocktail of drugs to win cycling’s greatest race, the Tour de France, a record seven times between 1999 and 2005.

Organisers of the race have previously said that they will not reattribute the winner in those races.