Seven-time Tour de France
winner Lance Armstrong angrily dissociated himself from doping admissions by two
former teammates and called the article citing them "sensationalism".
"Today's article in the New York Times was a blatant attempt to associate me
and implicate me with a former teammate's admission that he took banned
substances during his career," Armstrong said.
"The recycled suggestion that former teammates took EPO with my knowledge or
at my request is categorically false and distorted sensationalism."
The New York Times reported that Frankie Andreu, a retired captain of the US
Postal Service team, and another rider who did not want his name disclosed both
admitted taking the banned endurance-booster EPO in preparing for the 1999 Tour
de France, when Armstrong began a run of seven straight Tour triumphs.
Armstrong has already fought off claims that an updated test of a 1999 sample
applied by a French laboratory showed the US cycling star was positive.
Armstrong, who retired last year and will turn 35 next week, reiterated his
denial that he had ever used any performance enhancing drugs.
"My cycling victories are untainted," Armstrong said in a statement issued
Tuesday. "I didn't take performance enhancing drugs, I didn't ask anyone else to
take them and I didn't condone or encourage anyone else to take them.
"I won clean."
Both Andreu and his unidentified teammate told the newspaper they never saw
Armstrong take any banned substance.
But Andreu's wife, Betsy, told the Times she blamed Armstrong for pressuring
teammates to use drugs, saying her husband "didn't use EPO for himself, because
as a domestique, he was never going to win that race. It was for Lance."
Armstrong said the allegation that he encouraged teammates to dope was
counter to testimony Andreu himself gave under oath in an arbitration proceeding
in Texas.
Armstrong noted that he won that case, in which he was paid a five
million-dollar bonus for winning his sixth straight Tour title, which SCA
Promotions had tried to withhold because of doping allegations.
"The allegations re-run today are not new and I defeated them in court,"
Armstrong said. "The implication that drug use was common knowledge on the
Postal team is untrue.
"In a recent arbitration in Dallas, I proved I never used, asked or
encouraged anyone to take drugs."
Armstrong made an amazing recovery from life-threatening cancer to become the
greatest champion in Tour history and a symbol of hope for those with cancer,
but he has fought numerous doping allegations during his reign.
"With success comes skeptics, detractors, and attacks of guilt by
association, particularly in today's climate," Armstrong said. "I raced and won
clean."
Floyd Landis, who succeeded Armstrong as Tour de France champion this year,
is enmeshed in a doping fight of his own after testing positive for unusual
levels of testosterone during the 2006 race.
