Who'll get Armstrong's Tour titles? No easy answer

By Jamey Keaten

Associated Press

Published: Saturday, Aug. 25 2012 2:25 p.m. MDT

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Lance Armstrong guides his bicycle down the steps after his second-place finish in the Power of Four mountain bicycle race at the base of Aspen Mountain in Aspen, Colo., on Saturday, Aug. 25, 2012. The race is the first public appearance for Armstrong since the U.S. Anti-Doping Association stripped him of his seven Tour de France championships and banned him for life from professional cycling.

David Zalubowski, Associated Press

Summary

With Lance Armstrong stripped of his seven Tour de France titles for doping, simple logic might suggest that his runners-up from 1999 to 2005 would just inherit them, right?

PARIS — With Lance Armstrong stripped of his seven Tour de France titles for doping, simple logic might suggest that his runners-up from 1999 to 2005 would just inherit them, right?

Not so fast.

The doping-dazed sport of cycling has a logic all its own, and nearly all of the Texan's second-place finishers had their own issues, cases, admissions or suspicions about drug use or cheating at one point or another.

It makes for no easy choices for cycling's authorities and historians.

The International Cycling Union, UCI, has control on the record books, but has declined to comment until it learns of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency's reasons for stripping Armstrong of his Tour titles on Friday. Tour organizers were even more mum, deferring to the UCI and USADA in a two-sentence statement.

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