Cycling: Armstrong fires at drug claims

The seven-times Tour de France winner guaranteed himself maximum publicity by appearing on CNN's Larry King Live talk show on Thursday night to discuss the controversy. Armstrong lambasted the French laboratory that had tested the American's urine samples from his victorious 1999 Tour.

"A guy in a Parisian laboratory opens up your sample ... and he tests it - nobody's there to observe, no protocol was followed - and then you get a call from a newspaper that says, 'We found you to be positive six times for EPO'. Well, since when did newspapers start governing sports?" Armstrong said. "Nowadays, we all want clean sport. And fortunately, an organisation called WADA [the World Anti-Doping Agency] has come along and has really governed the world of anti-doping. They have set about a protocol and a code that everybody has to live by. And [the lab] violated the code several times."

The Texan has yet to threaten specific legal action. But he told King: "Since this stuff's rolled out, I sleep great at night... I don't have a problem looking at myself in the mirror.''