Lizzie Armitstead (Boels Dolmans) held a short conference call with the British press on Monday afternoon to discuss her final preparations for the weekend’s Olympic Games road race in Rio de Janeiro, where she lines up as the favourite for gold. The topic of her abandon at last month’s Giro Rosa, ostensibly due to illness, was touched upon only briefly. “I can be pretty confident: my health’s good, everything I’ve been able to control I’ve done to the best of my ability and I feel ready,” Armitstead said.
At that point, as far as the reporters on the call were aware, Armitstead’s abandon in Italy and subsequent absence from La Course in Paris had been the only twists on her road to Rio in a season where she has been the dominant force in the women’s peloton. Only on Monday night did it emerge that the world champion had taken a rather more convoluted detour via the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in Lausanne.
The Daily Mail’s Matt Lawton reported that Armitstead had missed three out-of-competition anti-doping tests in the space of twelve month months – on August 20 and October 5 last year, and on June 9. On July 11 – three days after leaving the Giro Rosa – UK Anti-Doping charged Armitstead and provisionally suspended her. At a CAS hearing on July 21, however, the Briton succeeded in having the first of the three missed tests expunged from her record and she was cleared to compete in Rio.
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Armitstead and UKAD have since issued statements outlining their respective positions on the case, though there have only been informal briefings from British Cycling rather than an official response, and CAS has yet to make any comment. It is a case that so far has raised more questions than answers.
Why did Armitstead not challenge the first missed test at the time?
In her statement on Monday evening, Armitstead accepted responsibility for the second and third missed tests. Her representatives cited “an administrative oversight” for the October 2015 filing failure and said that the June 2016 missed test was the result of Armitstead not updating her whereabouts because of an “emergency change of plans due to a serious illness within her family.”
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