Tour de France superstar scandal continues. Is he innocent? You decide

It was a measure of how hard-fought this battle would be that Lance Armstrong's rebuttal to l'Equipe was posted before the French sports daily published its story alleging that urine samples taken from the seven-time Tour de France winner at the 1999 Tour had tested positive for EPO. At 10 p.m. Mountain Time on Monday, Aug. 22, 2005, www.lequipe.fr had no mention of anything Armstrong-related; its top cycling story was a report on the Tour of Germany. But on www.thepaceline.com, the official fan site for the Discovery Channel team, was a three-paragraph response to the upcoming story. Armstrong reacted to l'Equipe's charges as he has in the past to other allegations that he's used performance-enhancing drugs. He asserted that he's never used performance-enhancing drugs, pointed out that he's never tested positive for drugs, and questioned the motives and integrity of the accuser. L'Equipe, similarly, mixed questions of motive and integrity with fact. Under the headline "The Armstrong Lie" the paper called Armstrong a cheat, going so far as to say that his seven Tour wins and the legend of his dominance, are a lie.