Former Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong is being ordered to pay $10 million.
Bleacher Report wrote that a Texas arbitration panel ruled against Armstrong and ordered the cyclist to pay back $10 million to SCA Promotions for the bonuses it paid during his past Tour de France championships. The panel voted 2-1 in favor of SCA Promotions, and will turn over its ruling to a court judge who will give a final approval on the issue.
Bob Hamman, founder and president of SCA, said about the ruling in USA Today, "We are very pleased with this result. It is hard to describe how much harm Lance Armstrong's web of lies caused SCA but this is a good first start towards repairing that damage."
In the same USA Today report, the panel ruled, "Perjury must never be profitable."
According to the panel, Armstrong and Tailwind Sports, the company that used to manage the disgraced champion's cycling team, "used perjury and other wrongful conduct to secure millions of dollars of benefits." The panel further found Armstrong and Tailwind to have "expressed no remorse to the panel for their wrongful conduct and continued to lie to the panel throughout the final hearing even while admitting to prior falsehoods and other wrongful conduct."
Bleacher Report also revealed that the court battle has been going on for over a decade when Armstrong first sued SCA Promotions in 2004 for breach of contract after the company did not provide him his bonus after winning the Tour de France. Armstrong's supporters featured an advertisement in the Sports Business Journal, putting SCA in bad light that even though it paid Armstrong his bonuses in 2002 and 2003, the final installment was not given.
The company suspected that Armstrong has been using drugs to win the tournament and refused to pay him if the allegations proved true. In 2005, Armstrong won the dispute but in 2012, he was stripped of all seven Tour de France titles and banned for life by the United States Anti-Doping Agency after having been found to have used drugs in the peak of his career.
BBC reported that Armstrong confessed his drug use in 2013 to Oprah Winfrey and added that he does not regret having used them during his winning years.
Jeff Tillotson, SCA's promotions attorney, said, "This record-breaking award was justified given Armstrong's outrageous conduct."
The parties will have to await the final ruling of a court judge on the repayment.