Lance Armstrong was caught with drugs by Swiss customs officials in 2003 and the seven-time Tour de France champ tested positive for elevated levels of testosterone on three occasions, Sports Illustrated is reporting in its Jan. 24 issue. "Lance had a bag of drugs and s---," disgraced rider Floyd Landis told the magazine. "They wanted to search it, which was out of the ordinary."
Agents who searched Armstrong's belongings after he arrived with teammates via a private charter found syringes and drugs with labels written in Spanish. Armstrong asked a teammate to convince the agents that the products were injectable vitamins. Landis said the agents "looked at us sideways, but let us through."
Armstrong, who won his Tour de France titles consecutively from 1999-2005, has maintained he's never used performance-enhancing drugs. A grand jury in Los Angeles has met for months to determine whether Armstrong was part of a criminal conspiracy to purchase performance-enhancing drugs.
Like many of the recent accusations against Armstrong in recent months, Landis -- who announced this week he was retiring from cycling -- is the main whistleblower. Landis won the Tour de France in 2006 only to have the title stripped after he tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs, a claim he denied for years before admitting to doping a few months back.
Armstrong brushed aside the new allegations during what was billed as a farewell race in Australia.
"I don't have anything to say," Armstrong told reporters before a stage in the southern Australian city of Adelaide. "I've perused it. There's nothing there."
Many of Armstrong's denials have included his assertion that he never tested positive, but SI is reporting that Armstrong did test above acceptable testosterone levels three times between June 1993 and July 1996 -- months before he was diagnosed with testicular cancer. Subsequent testosterone-epitestosterone tests, however, conducted by the UCLA Olympic Analytical Laboratory, then run by Don Catlin, could not confirm the original results and the samples were reported as negative.
The magazine also reports that Armstrong "gained access to" a since discontinued drug HemAssist, a medication developed by Baxter Healthcare Corp. and designed as a blood substitute. Like EPO, the drug can increase the production of red blood cells and, in turn, boost endurance.
"The story is filled with old news, recycling the same old tired lies from the same old tired liars," said Mark Fabiani, a spokesman for Armstrong, in an e-mail to FanHouse.
Read the full story at SI.com.
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