Lance Armstrong ordered to pay $10m to US promotions firm

Lance Armstrong's fall from grace continued on Monday with news the Texan has lost a long-running legal battle with Dallas company SCA Promotions, which paid him bonuses during his successful reign at the Tour de France.

The ruling, made recently by an arbitration panel in Texas and made public in a court filing on Monday, saw Armstrong given a $10 million penalty (€8.8m) for what the arbitrators terms was “an unparalleled pageant of international perjury, fraud and conspiracy.”

That decision was handed down earlier this month but with Armstrong refusing to pay, SCA Promotions has applied to a Dallas state district court to have the award enforced by a judgement. This action brought the earlier ruling to light.

“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,” said SCA’s president and founder Bob Hamman on Monday.

During the early 2000s the Texan prize promotion business originally entered into a contract with the owner of Armstrong's US Postal Service team, Tailwind Sports.

The latter took out a policy with SCA Promotions to cover the performance bonuses that it would have to pay the rider if he were to add to his Tour victories.

It paid Armstrong $4.5 million (€4m) for his victories in 2001, 2002 and 2003 and was due to pay out an additional $5 million (€4.4m) after he won his sixth Tour title in 2004.

However, it disputed this on the basis of doping claims made against Armstrong, with SCA arguing that the Tour wins may not have been clean.

Armstrong and Tailwind Sports fought this in court and eventually won on the basis that the original contract between the two companies didn’t include stipulations about doping.

SCA Promotions ended up paying the sum in question as well as an additional $2.5 million (€2.2m) in interest and legal fees.

However, when Armstrong finally admitted long-term doping in January 2013, SCA Promotions launched a new bid to try to recoup what had been paid out.

Armstrong is also fighting a Qui Tam whistleblower suit which could see him pay out tens of millions of dollars.