Bubka requests French lab suspended

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Suspension of French lab requested
September 22, 2005
Two prominent sports leaders have asked the World Anti-Doping Agency to suspend a French laboratory and investigate who leaked documents leading to a report that said Lance Armstrong used banned substances during the 1999 Tour de France. Denis Oswald, president of the Association of Summer Olympic International Federations (ASOIF), and Sergei Bubka, IOC athlete's commission chief and a former Russian pole vault record-holder, made the request in a joint letter, the French sports daily L'Equipe reported yesterday. In the letter to WADA's executive committee in Montreal, the pair accused the Chatenay-Malabry laboratory of violating ''confidentiality regulations" and called for an investigation to identify the person who handed over the documents. ''According to the world code, that laboratory should have ensured the anonymity of the samples used in their research, or asked the athletes concerned for permission to perform [post] analyses. It's not a question of protecting anyone, but of applying the rules," Oswald said, according to L'Equipe. Last month, L'Equipe published evidence allegedly showing that six of Armstrong's frozen urine samples from 1999 came back positive for endurance-boosting EPO when they were retested last year. The seven-time Tour de France winner denied ever using banned drugs, and said he was the victim of a ''witch hunt." According to L'Equipe, WADA's scientific director Olivier Rabin said no rules had been broken nor any standards breached.