ASTANA CYCLING TEAM AND LANCE ARMSTRONG ANNOUNCE INDEPENDENT, STATE-OF-THE-ART DRUG TESTING PROGRAM
ADELAIDE, AUSTRALIA, – The ASTANA Professional Cycling Team and seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong today announced the launch of a new, comprehensive drug testing program for Lance Armstrong. For the past four months, Dr. Don Catlin, the Chief Science Officer of Anti-Doping Sciences Institute, Inc. and one of the leading international anti-doping experts, has been developing a customized program to test Lance Armstrong throughout the 2009 cycling competition season for the use of performance enhancing substances and methods. The program calls for testing about once every three days. The new program’s testing is in addition to all the other drug testing to which Lance Armstrong is subject, including out-of-competition testing by the World Anti-Doping Agency (“WADA”), the Union Cycliste Internationale (“UCI”), the United States Anti-Doping Agency (“USADA”), in-competition testing at all of the events in which Lance will compete in 2009, and ASTANA’s additional testing of all members of the ASTANA team. The program has been launched, sample collection has commenced, and Dr. Catlin will issue reports on an on-going basis about the program results. Since his comeback announcement a few months ago, Armstrong has been tested 12 times in out-of-competition testing in addition to testing in the ASTANA program and the new ADSI program.
