Lance Armstrong loses $10 million arbitration ruling

Disgraced athlete Lance Armstrong and Tailwind Sports Corp. has been ordered to pay $10 million in a fraud dispute with a promotions company for “unparalleled pageant of international perjury, fraud and conspiracy” that covered up his use of performance-enhancing drugs. Dallas-based company SCA Promotions had paid Armstrong and Tailwind, the since-dissolved team management company, about $12 million in bonuses during Armstrong’s career, when he won seven Tour de France titles. Those victories were stripped after Armstrong and his U.S. Postal Service teams were found to have used banned performance-enhancing drugs.

Tailwind Sports Corp. and Lance Armstrong have justly earned wide public condemnation. That is an inadequate deterrent. Deception demands real, meaningful sanctions.

An arbitration panel backed by the Texas’ 116th Civil District Court in Dallas

SCA disputed the bonuses in arbitration in 2005, and the case produced the foundation of the doping evidence later used against him. Despite allegations of cheating, Armstrong continued to deny doping and the company settled with Armstrong and paid him $7 million in 2006. The company sued Armstrong to get its money back after Armstrong’s cheating was exposed by a report from the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency and a televised confession interview with Oprah Winfrey.

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