IOC "censures" Dick Pound for Armstrong comments

L.A. Times | IOC rebukes Pound for remarks

The L.A. Times reports that the International Olympic Committee chided World Anti-Doping Agency head Dick Pound on Friday for comments he made suggesting that Lance Armstrong used EPO during the 1999 Tour.

In 2005, when L'Equipe claimed to have cross-matched rider urine samples from the 1999 Tour against an experimental study reportedly performed to calibrate the EPO test, Pound jumped on the results to claim that Armstrong had used EPO during that Tour.

He did so despite the fact that the samples were provided to WADA on the express condition that they couldn't be used in any disciplinary action.

The IOC statement reportedly:

endorsed the ethics commission's carefully worded finding that Pound's public remarks "could have been regarded as likely to impugn the probity" of Armstrong. The remarks, it added, were imprudent in light of the Olympic charter's goal of "a spirit of friendship, solidarity, and fair play" within the movement.

Armstrong filed a complaint back in 2005, and the IOC has jurisdiction because Pound is an ex officio member as WADA chief. The IOC stopped short of finding an “incriminating element” in Pound's statements, “but noted that he had refused to respond to its requests that he respond to Armstrong's complaint.”

I've looked, but can't find the announcement on the official IOC website.

The New York Times adds responses from Armstrong and Pound.

Armstrong: “Armstrong called Pound ‘a clown’ and an ‘absolute disaster when it comes to giving interviews.’ ”

Pound:

“Lance Armstrong has probably killed a Brazilian rain forest with all the paper he has used to file his complaints against me,” he said. “He’s gone bananas.”

“He keeps alive this whole thing that he should be trying to fade away, that a French accredited laboratory found that he had six positive samples for EPO in 1999,” he said. “Maybe he thinks if he huffs and he puffs, all of this will go away, but it won’t.”