JOHANNESBURG — Cycling is weeks away from setting up an independent commission to investigate the sport's drug-stained past, World Anti-Doping Agency President John Fahey said Tuesday. Fahey said he was confident the commission was imminent after correspondence with the UCI's new leadership under recently elected president Brian Cookson. “I am confident that from what UCI have indicated, and their wish to get something going, that it will happen within weeks rather than within months,” Fahey said in Johannesburg on the opening day of the World Conference on Doping in Sport. However, Fahey said it would take something “close to a miracle” for disgraced American cyclist Lance Armstrong, who was banned for life and stripped of his seven Tour de France titles last year, to have his case re-opened and his ban reduced for cooperating with the commission. “As far as I'm concerned it's (Armstrong's case) done and dusted,” Fahey said. “Armstrong did what he did. We all know what that is. He did not cooperate, he did not defend the charges that USADA put out there last year and he was dealt with in a proper process.” Fahey said the case against Armstrong and his eventual life ban was “irrefutable.” The future of cycling is a major topic at WADA's four-day summit in South Africa this week, which will be attended by Cookson. Fahey said they will meet Wednesday to continue a dialogue which started almost as soon as Cookson was elected in September on promises to clean up the sport completely and confront its doping history. While it's still unclear how the commission will be set up and what parameters it will be given to work within, Armstrong's intention to seek a reduction in his ban in return for cooperating and telling what he knows has been a subject of major speculation in recent weeks. The American rider has intimated in interviews that he would be willing to cooperate with an independent commission, and has argued he should have been offered the same deal as other cyclists who also doped but received lesser bans. Fahey questioned the value of Armstrong's information now, over a year after USADA's investigation against him was concluded, and also said there still hadn't been any commitment from Armstrong to help USADA's ongoing probe into doping in cycling. — AP
