Paper stands by Armstrong doping allegations
The French sports newspaper that accused Lance Armstrong of doping stood by its reporting today, even after a Dutch investigator cleared the record seven-time Tour de France champion.
“There is nothing to retract from the revelations,” L’Equipe said in an editorial.
The newspaper repeated its allegations of last August that tests on six of Armstrong’s urie samples from the 1999 Tour had detected “an irrefutable presence” of the banned endurance-boosting hormone EPO.
But Dutch investigator Emile Vrijman, who was appointed by cycling’s governing body to investigate the handling of the urine tests by the French national anti-doping laboratory, cleared Armstrong in a report released yesterday.
It said tests on the urine samples were conducted improperly and fell so short of scientific standards that it was “completely irresponsible” to suggest they “constitute evidence of anything”.
