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Lance Armstrong camp turns to Twitter to refute tonight's 60 Minutes allegations

Facts4Lance twitter stream and website set up to put Texan's case...

Twitter is likely to be abuzz from midnight UK time tonight as cycling fans in the US get to see the much-anticipated season finale of the CBS news magazine show 60 Minutes which levels further allegations of drugs use against Lance Armstrong. Among those tweeting as the report unfolds on screen will members of the Texan’s own defence team, who have apparently set up an account on the social network, @facts4lance, which is also the name of a website dedicated to putting his case.

Tonight’s episode of 60 Minutes – a show that has an average audience of more than 13 million viewers – includes an interview with Tyler Hamilton in which he accuses his former team leader of doping during the 1999 Tour de France and ahead of other races.

Hamilton, who has also belatedly confessed to his own doping, including returning the gold medal he won in the time trial at the 2004 Olympics, will be repeating allegations he previously made while testifying to a federal grand jury in Los Angeles,

As with previous allegations made Floyd Landis, Armstrong’s defence team have attacked Hamilton’s credibility, including pointing out that he long denied his own history of doping and therefore his testimony cannot be relied upon. However, perjuring oneself in front of a grand jury can result in a jail sentence.

Potentially more damaging for the former US Postal Service and Discovery Channel team leader is that according to CBS, George Hincapie, who rode alongside him during each of his seven Tour de France wins, has reportedly told the grand jury that he and Armstrong both took performance enhancing substances.

Hincapie has long been seen as the closest rider to Armstrong, certainly during the seven years in which he dominated the Tour de France, and moreover does not carry the stigma of previous substance abuse attached to Landis or Hamilton.

Currently racing in the Amgen Tour of California for his current BMC Racing team, Hincapie has said only that he hasn’t spoken to 60 Minutes – something previously confirmed by CBS itself.

On the issue of what he may or may not have told the grand jury, Hincapie is silent, but if he has indeed admitted to using performance enhancing substances, there will clearly be potential repercussions for the cyclist himself, let alone those relating to anything he may have said about Armstrong.

As far as we are aware it will not be possible to watch tonight’s programme live from the UK, although it should subsequently be available to watch again on the 60 Minutes website.
 

Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.

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BigDummy | 12 years ago
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"Facts4Lance" has the same poetic air of heroic resistance as the Floyd Fairness Fund.

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Simon_MacMichael | 12 years ago
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Well, as we said in the first paragraph, the Armstrong camp had "apparently" set up a Twitter account, and "apparently" was the operative word, since while the Facts4Lance website certainly is run by Lance Armstrong's defence team, the Twitter account isn't and had been nabbed by someone else.

While the promised stream of tweets in Armstrong's defence never came, one that did simply said: "Tip to the PR masters, the master of disasters! It's 2011, register the twitter handle when you create a website."

We'll hold our hands up straight away and say that we fell for it, and plenty of others did too, and we have to admit we had a bit of a chuckle when we read that tweet.

Of course, none of that changes what we say in the rest of the article above, nor our separate coverage of the 60 Minutes programme itself.

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