A former team-mate of shamed cyclist Lance Armstrong, Norway's Steffen Kjaergaard, will escape sanctions despite having admitted doping, the country's anti-doping agency announced on Monday. Kjaergaard, who competed in the 2000 and 2001 Tour de France on Armstrong's US Postal Service team, admitted in October last year that he took the banned blooster erythropoetin (EPO). His admission came just before the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) published its devastating report that placed Armstrong at the heart of what it said was the biggest doping network in sporting history.

Disgraced US cyclist Lance Armstrong has scrapped plans to enter a swim race in Texas following objections from the sport's global governing body, it was reported Thursday. Armstrong, 41, who was stripped of his seven Tour de France wins and banned for life before later confessing to drug-taking throughout his career, had hoped to compete in a US Masters Swimming event in Austin this weekend.

Rolf Soerensen, one of Denmark's most successful professional cyclists, admitted Monday to using blood-boosting EPO and cortisone in the 1990s, ending more than a year of denials. "I used EPO periodically in the 90s," Soerensen, now 47, said in a statement. "I have also in some cases used the substance cortisone. There is no other excuse than that I did what I felt compelled to do to be an equal among peers," he added. Sorensen, who won two stages of the Tour de France in 1994 and 1996, refused to identify other riders who used performance-enhancing drugs.

By John Mehaffey LONDON (Reuters) - Disgraced U.S. cyclist Lance Armstrong has been personally urged to make a full confession of all his involvement in doping by the founder of the lobby group Change Cycling Now. Jaimie Fuller, who formed the group which includes former Tour de France champion Greg Lemond, told Reuters on Wednesday he had talked to Armstrong for an hour on the telephone last month.