PARIS: Seven-time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong denied ever taking performance-enhancing drugs, in response to a report published yesterday by the French daily L'Equipe that he was proven to have taken an endurance-boosting hormone during his first Tour de France triumph in 1999.

"Yet again, a European newspaper has reported that I have tested positive for performance enhancing drugs," Armstrong said in a statement on his web site, www.lancearmstrong.com.

"Tomorrow's L'Equipe, a French sports daily, is reporting that my 1999 samples were positive. Unfortunately, the witch hunt continues and tomorrow's article is nothing short of tabloid journalism."

With a headline splashing "Armstrong's Lie" on its front page, the newspaper reported that Armstrong's use of the banned blood booster EPO (erythropoietin) was revealed in tests by a French laboratory of frozen urine samples taken during his first Tour triumph.

Armstrong said: "The paper even admits in its own article that the science in question here is faulty and that I have no way to defend myself. They state: 'There will therefore be no counter-exam nor regulatory prosecutions, in a strict sense, since defendants rights cannot be respected.'

"I will simply restate what I have said many times: I have never taken performance enhancing drugs," said the 33-year-old cyclist, who retired in July after his record seventh Tour title.

L'Equipe said traces of EPO had been found on six different occasions in Armstrong's 1999 urine samples by the national doping testing laboratory of Chatenay-Malabry near Paris.

The urine samples, taken in 1998 and 1999, were tested in 2004 by the laboratory, which itself fine-tuned the testing system, according to the report.

No indication was given in the story for the delay in revealing the results or about any preservation or safeguarding methods regarding the samples.

EPO stimulates the production of red blood cells which transports oxygen to cells and muscles.

(China Daily 08/24/2005 page16)