Call it the Lance Armstrong case’s Frankie Pentangeli moment: A witness who was expected to testify that she heard Armstrong admit to taking performance enhancing drugs now says that, nope, she never did. Stephanie McIlvain, a business associate of Armstrong’s, appeared before the jury hearing evidence connected to allegations of doping in professional cycling during a daylong session. Last week federal prosecutors said they had obtained a telephone conversation secretly recorded six years ago by cycling great Greg LeMond, that proves Armstrong admitted the use of PEDs. According to the Los Angeles Times, the recording is said to be of LeMond and a woman — who sources say is McIlvain. But then … from the Associated Press:
“She testified that she had never heard Lance Armstrong say he had taken performance-enhancing drugs,” said McIlvain’s attorney, Thomas H. Bienert Jr.”
But this saga isn’t over.
In an e-mail, Betsy Andreu (wife of former Armstrong teammate Frankie Andreu) accused McIlvain of lying under oath Wednesday. “Stephanie not only talked about Lance’s use of performance-enhancing drugs with me and Frankie but with many others as well.”
She said there will be “overwhelming” evidence to support her claims that Armstrong said he used performance-enhancing drugs.
We now return you to “Godfather II,” already in progress: “So, so I made up a lot of stuff about Michael Corleone ’cause that’s what they wanted. But it was all lies. Uh, everything. And I kept saying Michael Corleone did this, and Michael Corleone did that. So, I said yeah, sure — why not?”
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Lance Armstrong Finally Finds Someone To Defend Him [Huffington Post]
Secret recording links Lance Armstrong to PEDs, say Feds [Out of Bounds]
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- Donald B McGee - Sep 24, 2010 at 12:57 AM
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Greg LeMond is scumm….He can’t stand that Lance has a better record than he.Same with that other weasel Landis.. who won…was disqualified….said for years he was clean…all of a sudden, he wants to accuse everyone else to get attention off himself. Lance has tested clean all along the way. The whole french government and sports associations could not prove anything. Go Lance….
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- z123 - Sep 24, 2010 at 8:54 AM
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Now most of the top sports are two tiered games. The visible competition and the less visible one of cheating in various ways, most commonly using performance enhancing drugs. In the first tier you win by being first or scoring most points, in the second you win by not being caught. Lance won in both and going after him now doesn’t make too much sense as there’s not too much to be achieved here.
IMHO, Landis was hoping for support for keeping his mouth shut and didn’t get it. Was he entitled to it? No. Could Lance and Tour of California have helped Landis a bit? I think they should have. Wouldn’t cost them much. Well… now it’s all history. Landis went public and it should have stayed that way. Let people decide who to believe and leave it at that. I agree with Lance that it’s a waste of taxpayers dollars going through legal proceedings.
What do I believe? Well, if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck. Nobody will convince me that Lance did not use drugs. But after all, I don’t think less of the man because of it. Again, he won in both games. Now let him enjoy retirement. And Greg Lemond should do the same.
