Cycling and Anti-doping bodies wrangle over Armstrong case

Washington, Aug 4(ANI): The Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI), which is the governing body for cycling on the Olympic and Tour de France level, has asked the US Anti-doping Agency (USADA) to handover the Lance Armstrong doping case to them, according to court documents filed on Friday in a federal court in Texas.

The UCI was openly hostile to Floyd Landis, whose accusations in 2010 have put Armstrong on the legal defensive like never before, but it's the USADA who has spent two years investigating into the case.

The UCI appears to have first claimed jurisdiction in a letter dated July 13 that was attached to a brief that USADA filed at U.S. District Court in Austin, where Armstrong is suing USADA.

"The UCI wants that the whole case file with all the evidence is assessed by an independent panel who shall then decide if the respondents have a case to answer," The New York Daily News quoted the letter, signed by UCI president Pat McQuaid, as saying.

However, USADA has rejected the argument in its own letter on July 26, citing UCI's conflict of interest, as its reported that Armstrong once gave the organization a large cash donation.

Armstrong has denied USADA's accusation that he sat atop a complicated doping plot within the taxpayer-funded U.S. Postal Service cycling team.

"The USPS Doping Conspiracy was going on under the watch of UCI, so of course UCI and the participants in the conspiracy who cheated sport with dangerous performance enhancing drugs to win have a strong incentive to cover up what transpired," USADA's chief executive, Travis Tygart said in a statement Friday. (ANI)