Ignorance is not a solid defense.
For its part, the agency can be questioned about the glee with which it announced that it had cornered Armstrong for the unannounced test. This wasn’t merely about seeing whether Armstrong is clean, it was a message: In France, you’re on our turf and you’ll get no special treatment.
“He needs to know that he is like everyone else,” said the agency’s president Pierre Bordry, which sounds distinctly as if Armstrong was specifically targeted and therefore is not simply like everyone else.
At the agency, the version of events is that only when the tester threatened to call in gendarmes did Bruyneel agree to let testing proceed and the French official pooh-poohed Armstrong’s claim that the tester let him shower. The tester reported that he repeatedly warned Armstrong that he had to keep him within his sight at all times.
The agency says it hasn’t decided whether to launch disciplinary proceedings. But Bordry seemed to hint that it might, saying he didn’t want to comment because “we are entering into a contentious phase, or likely to be contentious.”
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