Lance Armstrong guides his bicycle down the steps after his second-place finish in the Power of Four mountain bicycle race at the base of Aspen Mountain in Aspen, Colo., on Saturday, Aug. 25, 2012. The race is the first public appearance for Armstrong since the U.S. Anti-Doping Association stripped him of his seven Tour de France championships and banned him for life from professional cycling. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
Lance Armstrong guides his bicycle down the steps after his second-place finish in the Power of Four mountain bicycle race at the base of Aspen Mountain in Aspen, Colo., on Saturday, Aug. 25, 2012. The race is the first public appearance for Armstrong since the U.S. Anti-Doping Association stripped him of his seven Tour de France championships and banned him for life from professional cycling. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
FILE - In this July 24, 2005 file photo, Lance Armstrong gestures from the podium after winning his seventh straight Tour de France cycling race, as second-placed Ivan Basso of Italy, left, and third-placed Jan Ullrich of Germany, look on, after the 21st and final stage of the race in Paris. Armstrong, he superstar cyclist whose stirring victories after his comeback from cancer helped him transcend sports, chose not to pursue arbitration in the drug case brought against him by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency. That was his last option in his bitter fight with USADA and his decision set the stage for the titles to be stripped and his name to be all but wiped from the record books of the sport he once ruled. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena, File)
FILE - This is a Saturday July 27, 2002 file photo of Joseba Beloki of Spain, on his way to finishing in ninth place in the 19th stage of the Tour de France cycling race, a 50 kilometer (31 miles) individual time trial between Regnie-Durette, central France, and Macon, Burgundy. The cyclists Lance Armstrong beat to win his seven Tour de France victories may soon get a chance at his titles. But their ranks include men who have faced a tangle of doping bans and accusations, possibly presenting a headache for Tour leadership. Beloki finished second to Armstrong in 2002 (AP Photo/Laurent Rebours, File)
FILE - This is a Wednesday, July 23, 2003 file photo of Jan Ullrich of Germany as he strains in the ascent of the Bagarguy pass during the 16th stage of the Tour de France cycling race between Pau and Bayonne, southwestern France. The cyclists Lance Armstrong beat to win his seven Tour de France victories may soon get a chance at his titles. But their ranks include men who have faced a tangle of doping bans and accusations, possibly presenting a headache for Tour leadership. Ullrich finished second to Armstrong in 2003. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong, File)
FILE - This is a Friday, July 22, 2005 file photo of Ivan Basso of Italy, foreground, followed by Jan Ullrich of Germany, pedals during the 19th stage of the Tour de France cycling race between Issoire and Le Puy-en-Velay, central France. The cyclists Lance Armstrong beat to win his seven Tour de France victories may soon get a chance at his titles. But their ranks include men who have faced a tangle of doping bans and accusations, possibly presenting a headache for Tour leadership. Basso finished second to Armstrong in 2005. (AP Photo/Alessandro Trovati, File)
PARIS (AP) ? With Lance Armstrong stripped of his seven Tour de France titles for doping, simple logic might suggest that his runners-up from 1999 to 2005 would just inherit them, right?
Not so fast.
The doping-dazed sport of cycling has a logic all its own, and nearly all of the Texan's second-place finishers had their own issues, cases, admissions or suspicions about drug use or cheating at one point or another.
It makes for no easy choices for cycling's authorities and historians.
The International Cycling Union, UCI, has control on the record books, but has declined to comment until it learns of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency's reasons for stripping Armstrong of his Tour titles on Friday. Tour organizers were even more mum, deferring to the UCI and USADA in a two-sentence statement.
It could take months, or years, to iron out. But a guessing game has already erupted about who will ? or should ? inherit Armstrong's titles, and whether cycling chiefs might try to clean the slate once and for all.
Pierre Bordry, a former head of the French anti-doping agency, suggested the sport's authorities should use the chance to send the message that cycling is clearing the wreckage deep in its doping past.
"When he's stripped of his titles ? if they do ? from Mr. Armstrong ... they're not necessarily required to give them to someone else," he told France-Info radio. "It's very clear that the titles of Tour de France champion mustn't be awarded to people who faced suspicion that they were doped, or who were."
Former Armstrong rival Filippo Simeoni of Italy told The Associated Press that the succession issue was "a good question. That entire decade was one big bluff."
Road-race cycling, one of the world's most grueling endurance sports, has been plagued by drug use and other cheating ever since the first Tour in 1903 ? when competitors juiced up on wine, cocaine, wine, even strychnine, to get a lift in the nearly inhuman three-week race.
Modern, high-tech medicine and the lure of riches and fame in an increasingly global sport tempted many to try to cheat over the last 15 years or so. At the same time, sport authorities ? responding in part to criticism from fans ? have cracked down with tougher penalties and anti-doping controls, which in part explains the upsurge in scandals.
It's hard to come by an exhaustive and definitive list of cyclists and teams involved in doping cases, but many experts believe the Tour peloton was more rife with drugs cheats in the 1990s and early 2000s than today. Few experts believe that cycling is clean, and the Tour this year was marred by two doping-related cases.
The dilemma for sport historians stems in part from lax, ineffective or nonexistent doping controls in previous years. For example, a test for blood booster EPO ? the longtime designer-drug for cyclists ? was only approved by the International Olympic Committee and UCI in 2000, but it was believed to be widely used in the peloton in the 1990s.
Even when riders were caught or admitted to doping, the penalties weren't as severe as they would be today. Take 1999, the year of Armstrong's first win. His runner-up was Swiss rider Alex Zulle, who a year earlier had admitted to having taken EPO for the previous four years. Under today's rules, he would not have been allowed to ride in 1999. He made the admission only after his Festina team was caught in a huge 1998 scandal seen as a watershed moment in the fight against doping in cycling.
Jan Ullrich of Germany, the 1997 Tour winner and a three-time runner-up to Armstrong, was the biggest-name cyclist among at least 50 implicated in the "Operation Puerto" police investigation in Spain in 2006. Only this past February, he received a two-year ban from the Court of Arbitration for Sport in that case, though he retired years ago. He also served a six-month ban following a positive test in 2002 for amphetamines.
Like the Festina case, Puerto again exposed the breadth of doping in cycling ? either before or after some riders' best Tour performances. The 2002 runner-up, Joseba Beloki of Spain, was also implicated, but was reportedly cleared later by a Spanish court of any involvement. Ivan Basso of Italy, the 2005 runner-up, served a two-year ban linked to the Puerto case.
The 2004 runner-up was Andreas Kloeden of Germany. In 2009, an independent German probe alleged his Telekom and T-Mobile teams engaged in systematic blood doping from 1995 to 2006, and that he used illegal blood transfusions during the 2006 Tour. Kloeden, who like Basso is still competing professionally, has repeatedly denied doping.
Many factors determine how the record books might be tweaked.
In 2007, Bjarne Riis of Denmark admitted to using EPO, growth hormones and cortisone on his way to victory in the Tour in 1996 ? more than a decade after the fact. The Tour's history book left him as its winner but puts an asterisk next to his name, because "at the time of this admission, the statute of limitations had run out." The World Anti-Doping Code has an eight-year statute of limitations on doping offenses.
French newspaper Liberation on Friday posited its unofficial estimate about "potential winners" based on a sweeping calculation that excluded any rider who tested positive, was implicated in doping, or even had contact with teams or doctors suspected of banned practices during the Armstrong era.
For example, the newspaper claimed little-known Italian Daniele Nardello was the highest-placed rider in the 2000 Tour never implicated in any doping or suspicion ? and he finished 10th that year.
The daily also suggested the 2002 title could go to Carlos Sastre, the 10th-place finisher that year, and another for 2004 when he placed eighth. The Spaniard did win the Tour outright in 2008 ? a race riddled with doping scandals. Also by Liberation's reckoning, Cadel Evans of Australia, who won the 2011 Tour, would also have won in 2005, when he was eighth.
Tour officials have scrubbed the history books before.
This year, Andy Schleck of Luxembourg inherited the 2010 title in a ceremony in his home country ? off the glamorous Champs-Elysees backdrop where the Tour finishes each year ? after Spain's Alberto Contador lost it in a doping case.
Before that, in 2007, after American Floyd Landis became the first cyclist to lose a Tour title for doping, race chiefs traveled to Spain to hand over the 2006 yellow jersey to his runner-up, Oscar Pereiro.
In a small but symbolic ceremony at Spain's Sports Ministry, Tour President Christian Prudhomme hailed Pereiro as "a late winner, but ... a real winner."
How times were simpler then: Now it's up to cycling's bosses to determine the "real winner" of the races still listed as Armstrong victories.
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AP Sports Writer Andrew Dampf contributed from Ponza, Italy
Associated Press
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