Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

Things are rarely as they appear. Take the allegations by the French sports newspaper L'Equipe that Lance Armstrong used the performance-enhancing drug EPO to help win his first Tour de France in 1999. Now, consider the following:

L'Equipe, which has never hidden its hatred of Armstrong, is owned by the Amaury Group whose subsidiary, Amaury Sport Organization, organizes the Tour de France. A former L'Equipe journalist, Pierre Ballester, was co-author of LA Confidentiel: les secrets de Lance Armstrong, published last year, which contained doping allegations against the cyclist. Ballester wrote the book with Sunday Times sportswriter David Walsh, an Armstrong fan until his son died in a tragic cycling accident. So, two important questions arise: (1). Given the lengthy investigation conducted by the Paris police into the possible use of drugs by Armstrong's US Postal team in 2000, why did the French authorities wait until December 2004, more than four years after a new EPO test was developed by scientists in the national drug-screening laboratory at Chatenay- Malabry, before testing samples that were already five years old? (2). And why has it taken until now for the results to be leaked to L'Equipe? Note: The laboratory appeared to contradict L'Equipe yesterday by confirming that all their tests during the 1999 Tour were anonymous and that no link could be made to a specific cyclist.

Armstrong's libel action against The Sunday Times, which reprinted the Ballester- Walsh allegations in a review of the book, will be heard in the High Court in London in November.

Just background, like.