Performance-enhancing Drugs, Tour De France | featured news

Lance Armstrong faces a powerful new adversary -- the United States government. The Justice Department notified a federal court Friday that it has joined one of his former racing teammates in suing him for using performance enhancing drugs during the Tour de France.

Disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong on Thursday was sued by a company that paid him about $12 million in prize money in connection with three of the seven Tour de France titles that have since been stripped from him for his use of banned drugs.

Lance Armstrong confessed to using performance-enhancing drugs to win the Tour de France during an interview with Oprah Winfrey, reversing more than a decade of denial.

Lance Armstrong has cut formal ties with his cancer-fighting charity to avoid further damage brought by doping charges and being stripped of his seven Tour de France titles.

Lance Armstrong's Tour de France titles will not be given to others in the wake of the doping scandal, cycling's governing body says.

The director of the Swiss anti-doping laboratory informed federal authorities last fall that Lance Armstrong's test results from the 2001 Tour de Suisse were "suspicious" and "consistent with EPO use," The Associated Press has learned....

Attorneys for Lance Armstrong have demanded an on-air apology from "60 Minutes" after the head of Switzerland's anti-doping laboratory denied allegations the seven-time Tour de France winner tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs at the 2001 Tour de Suisse.

A former teammate of Lance Armstrong has told "60 Minutes" that he used performance-enhancing drugs with the seven-time Tour de France winner to cheat in cycling races, including the tour.

Federal authorities have reportedly obtained an important piece of evidence linking Lance Armstrong to performance-enhancing drugs. Greg LeMond (pictured), a three-time Tour de France winner, secretly recorded a telephone call six years ago with a woman close to Lance Armstrong who was in Armstrong's hospital room in 1996 when he told cancer doctors about his use of performance-enhancing drugs, the Los Angeles Times reported.

In most sports, times shrink, but in the Tour de France, progress against drugs may be measured in rising times.