The Dutch cycling federation is to set up a commission to probe the “culture of doping” in the sport, laid bare by the scandal surrounding disgraced superstar Lance Armstrong.

“Professional cycling is in crisis in the wake of the US Anti-Doping Agency report into Armstrong’s cheating and the shock withdrawal of Dutch Rabobank as a sponsor last month,” the Royal Dutch Cycling Federation (KNWB) said.

“The KNWB believes more can and must be done to fight doping,” it added.

The commission will investigate the facts and findings in relation to the ‘doping culture’ within Dutch cycling, the KNWB said in a statement.

It will then come up “with concrete suggestions on how to improve current measures to combat doping, it added.

Armstrong was stripped of his record seven Tour de France wins after an USADA report published on October 10 identified him as the kingpin of the most sophisticated doping programme in the history of sport.

Just over a week later Dutch cycling sponsor Rabobank said it will stop sponsoring professional cycling at the end of this year.

The scandal has also tainted Hein Verbruggen, a Dutch national who headed the International Cycling Union (UCI) at the time of the shamed US rider’s consecutive Tour de France wins between 1999 and 2005.

Verbruggen is still an honorary president of the UCI, but has come under mounting pressure from anti-doping campaigners to leave.

During the late 1980s and early 90s many doctors voiced concerns after more than a dozen Dutch professional cyclists died within the space of three years, raising suspicions about the use of banned substances including banned blood booster EPO (erythropoietin).