Armstrong foe says finding the truth is top priority

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) — Even those who don’t rec­og­nize his name will almost cer­tainly know what Travis Tygart has been up to lately.

To put it sim­ply, he’s the man who’s been mak­ing life dif­fi­cult for Lance Armstrong.

Part teacher and part preacher for his cause, Tygart’s offi­cial title is chief exec­u­tive offi­cer of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency. He’s a man who doles out lessons about play­ing fair while also try­ing to cajole con­fes­sions from those who don’t.

His mis­sion: Make sports a sanc­tu­ary for find­ing out which ath­lete is most tal­ented and has worked the hard­est, not who’s the best cheater.

Most recently, that mis­sion has led Tygart to spear­head the case that’s ended Armstrong’s cycling and triathlon careers. Only a year ago, that task seemed even more dif­fi­cult than out-pedaling him in the Tour de France. Now, Arm­strong has been cut loose by his major spon­sors and is no longer the face of the Live­strong char­ity he founded.

As it turns out, the man who became Armstrong’s great­est adver­sary is like him in some ways.

Both Arm­strong and Tygart are 41. Like Arm­strong, Tygart is in great shape and loves to get on the bike every once in a while.

And like Arm­strong, Tygart has a stub­born streak in him. A big one.

“I saw at an early age that work­ing hard is how you become suc­cess­ful,” says Tygart, who learned his lessons about team­work and sports grow­ing up in Florida, where he was on state-championship base­ball and bas­ket­ball teams in high school.

“Play­ing sports as a kid, I learned all the valu­able lessons that I think sports should teach. I’m deter­mined to do every­thing pos­si­ble to main­tain those lessons for kids grow­ing up.”

Tygart has par­layed that credo into a career that, because of his role in tak­ing down one of the world’s most famous ath­letes, has made him among both the most trusted and reviled fig­ures in sports — even if only a small minor­ity of sports fans would rec­og­nize him walk­ing down the street.

“I always knew I wanted to do some­thing that made a dif­fer­ence. It was never about any­thing other than try­ing to change the world for a bet­ter tomor­row,” he says, a self-conscious laugh creep­ing in when he hears how much his words seem like a superhero’s catchphrase.

If it all sounds a bit sanc­ti­mo­nious and too good to be true, well, his crit­ics cer­tainly won’t argue. To them, he is a hatchet man who ran a witch hunt to set­tle an old score against Arm­strong — a foe who eluded sanc­tions for more than a decade.

“This isn’t about Tygart want­ing to clean up cycling,” Arm­strong wrote in a let­ter to The Asso­ci­ated Press, before USADA ordered his seven Tour de France titles stripped and before a mas­sive report detail­ing the evi­dence against him was released. “Rather it’s just a plain ol’ selec­tive pros­e­cu­tion that reeks of vendetta.”

The case Tygart’s agency pro­duced included tes­ti­mony from 11 for­mer team­mates of Armstrong’s, along with 15 oth­ers, who teamed up to paint the pic­ture of Arm­strong as a drug-pushing bully. The report exposed what Tygart calls the most exten­sive dop­ing pro­gram sports has ever seen.

On Wednes­day, a week after USADA’s doc­u­ments were released, Arm­strong left his post as chair­man of his Live­strong foun­da­tion, the same day Nike announced it would sever ties with its long­time pitchman.

It was the lat­est in a steady drum­beat of bad news for Arm­strong, all deliv­ered — either directly or indi­rectly — cour­tesy of the agency Tygart has led since 2007 when his pre­de­ces­sor, Terry Mad­den, stepped down.

USADA was formed in 2000 as a way of tak­ing drug cases that were decided by the U.S. Olympic Com­mit­tee and plac­ing them in the hands of a group that would be run independently.

The agency is par­tially funded by the USOC and par­tially by the gov­ern­ment. It runs on an annual bud­get of about $14 mil­lion and is tasked with find­ing and catch­ing the drug cheats, spread­ing the mes­sage of clean sports and stay­ing on top of the sci­ence in a busi­ness where the bad guys are always a step ahead.

As out­side coun­sel, then gen­eral coun­sel, then CEO for USADA, Tygart has worked on every major dop­ing case of the past decade, includ­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion into the Bay Area Lab­o­ra­tory Co-operative, which showed how sophis­ti­cated the performance-enhancing drug game had grown and resulted in the pros­e­cu­tion of Barry Bonds.

Among those caught in USADA’s net over the years: 2006 Tour de France win­ner Floyd Lan­dis; Olympic gold medal­ists Mar­ion Jones and Justin Gatlin; cyclist Tyler Hamil­ton; all the play­ers listed in the Mitchell Report, which doc­u­mented dop­ing in base­ball and which was put together with Tygart’s input. All have had their accom­plish­ments stripped or brought into question.

Through it all, Tygart insists he’s treated the so-called celebrity ath­letes the same way he treats the unknowns — the 40-something marathon run­ners and teenage in-line skaters who also fall under USADA’s purview.

Posted by Jon Kleinknecht on Oct 19 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.