Australian Olympic Committee calls for disgraced cyclist Stuart O'Grady's resignation HOW much worse will it get for Stuart O'Grady and how much worse will it get for the sport that made him famous - cycling? The name of O'Grady, a multiple Olympic medallist, world champion and Tour de France stage winner, will be forever tarnished in the wake of his admission that he used performance-enhancing drugs in preparation for the 1998 Tour de France, the infamous Tour de Dopage, in which he wore the yellow leader's jersey for three memorable days. The Australian Olympic Committee said O'Grady will no longer be remembered as a "fantastic competitor" but as an "athlete who succumbed to the temptation of drugs in sport just to get an edge on some of his fellow riders." O'Grady, who unexpectedly announced his retirement at the end of his 17th Tour de France this week, admitted to using the banned blood booster erythropoietin (EPO) after he was named, with other riders from the scandal-plagued 1998 Tour, in a French parliamentary inquiry into the use of drugs in cycling. He insisted it was a one-off, bad decision. Just hours later, the AOC called for the resignation of O'Grady from its Athletes Commission. "I think all the athletes in our London (Olympic) team who voted for Stuart to be a member of our Athletes Commission are entitled to feel angry today," AOC media director Mike Tancred said. Stuart O'Grady on podium wearing yellow jersey as overall leader after winning two intermediate sprints following fourth stage of 1998 Tour de France. If you are on the AOC Athletes Commission you are held in very high esteem. We pick only people with integrity and honesty but I think the AOC is justied in saying today, given his admission, that Stuart doesn't deserve to be a member of the Athletes Commission and we have asked for his resignation. The fallout will continue. Asked if the AOC would strip O'Grady of the medals he won as an Australian Olympian, Tancred said it would be the UCI, the world governing body of cycling, and the International Olympic Committee who would make that decision. O'Grady's Orica GreenEDGE team yesterday was quick to pledge its support but others have not. "The team would also like to express its support in Stuart as a person and as an advocate for a clean sport," GreenEDGE team manger Shane Bannon said on Thursday. Like the majority of the riders in his generation, he was also exposed to the issues and wrongdoings of the sport and made some wrong choices in that environment. We would like to underline that in all of our interactions with Stuart, he has always been extremely clear about the right path for the sport and we believe that certain mistakes in the past shouldn't be allowed to tarnish his entire career and his integrity as a person. But even O'Grady has conceded that this is an unlikely scenario, openly admitting that all his career achievements 8would be clouded by his confession. So too will cycling. The damage done by the countless drug cheats smears any other athlete in any other sport. "You win Olympics, Paris-Roubaix and now all of that is going to be tainted by this action and I wish it could be changed but it can't," O'Grady said. That's the hardest thing to swallow out of all this - it was such a long time ago and one very bad judgment is going to taint a lot of things and people will have a lot of questions. O'Grady insists he had doped just once. Once, or for an entire career, the damage is done and cycling will continue to pay for its sins of the past. A French government inquiry has accused 18 riders of having traces of EPO in their tests and said another 12, including O'Grady, had "suspicious" samples. Not so long ago, O'Grady spoke out about those very sins - saying he would never share a beer with the sport's biggest cheat, Lance Armstrong. "It's time for everyone next year to start talking about what's going to happen in racing . . . back to basics," he said just last year. Otherwise, this story is going to keep rumbling on for years and the negativity is not good for anybody. It's not good for future sponsors, not good for current sponsors and if they want cycling to exist you've got to concentrate on what's happening now.