Australian would have faced serious sanction if he had made a false signing
Removed from the Australian Olympic Committee’s Athlete’s Commission two days after he admitted to used EPO during the 1998 Tour de France, it appears that earlier this year Stuart O’Grady had been willing to declare he had never used banned substances.
O’Grady was voted onto the AOC Athlete’s Commission after the London Olympics last year and, under AOC rules, was required to sign a declaration attesting to having always competed clean.
According to Fairfax Media, the AOC had been chasing his signature for several months. It said that email correspondence was exchanged in relation to this, and O’Grady indicated in February that he planned to sign the declaration.
However that signature was not put to paper.
Despite announcing in June that he would compete until after the 2014 Tour de France, the Australian suddenly retired on Monday. That unexpected announcement came two days before the publication of the French Senate report into doping.
In that report, O’Grady was listed as having a suspicious test result for EPO during the 1998 Tour de France.
On the same day, O’Grady admitted to using banned substances prior to the race, but said he had always raced clean thereafter.
Had O’Grady signed the AOC document, he would have been liable to severe sanctions as a result of the untruthful declaration.
The AOC contacted him yesterday asking him to resign from the Commission. He didn’t reply to that and so the AOC went ahead and stripped him of the position.
O’Grady took a gold Olympic medal in 2004, silver in 1992 and two bronze medals in 1996.
The UCI has said that riders’ results will not be stripped as a result of the tests as they were carried out under the name of scientific research. As the normal protocols were not in place, it said that there is no basis to strike off results from the riders concerned.