ROTTERDAM, Netherlands – Seven-time champion Lance Armstrong hit out Saturday only hours before the start of his final Tour de France campaign at more “false” doping accusations leveled by former teammate Floyd Landis.

Disgraced champion Landis was stripped of his yellow jersey in 2006 after testing positive for testosterone but spent millions of dollars trying to clear his name.

After four years of denials Landis caused a sensation recently by finally confessing to doping. But in so doing he also claimed that Armstrong and other former teammates also doped throughout their careers.

On Saturday the Wall Street Journal carried further damaging claims from Landis, including allegations that team bikes were sold, and not given, to members of Armstrong and Landis’s former team US Postal by supplier Trek to help pay for the team’s doping program.

Among Landis’s fresh allegations were that he, Armstrong and some other members of US Postal received performance-enhancing blood transfusions during the 2004 Tour de France, which Armstrong won for the sixth of his seven Tour titles.

Doping allegations have dogged Armstrong through much of his career. He has strenuously denied them and has never failed a doping test.

Cancer survivor Armstrong, who won the race seven years consecutively from 1999-2005, is participating in his final yellow jersey campaign and has an outside chance of challenging for an eighth crown.

Only hours before the start of the race’s opening prologue, the 38-year-old RadioShack team rider once more hit back at Landis’s “baseless” claims.

“Today’s Wall Street Journal article is full of false accusations and more of the same old news from Floyd Landis, a person with zero credibility and an established pattern of recanting tomorrow what he swears to today,” a statement from Armstrong said.

“The article repeats many of Landis’s baseless and already-discredited claims against many successful people in cycling, and even includes some newly created Landis concoctions.

“Landis’ credibility is like a carton of sour milk: once you take the first sip, you don’t have to drink the rest to know it has all gone bad.

“For years, sensational stories — based on the allegations of ax-grinders have surfaced on the eve of the Tour for publicity reasons, and this article is simply no different.

“Lastly, I have too much work to do during this, my final Tour, and then after my retirement in my continued fight against cancer, to add any attention to this predictable pre-Tour sensationalism.”

Landis’s claims in May prompted the US authorities to launch a federal investigation led by Food and Drug Administration (FDA) special agent Jeff Novitzky, who led a successful probe into the BALCO (Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative) which produced and supplied designer drugs for Major League Baseball players and athletes.

Race organizers have yet to react to Landis’s new claims, however Tour de France chief Christian Prudhomme is fully aware of Novitzky’s reputation.

Prudhomme said last week: “I don’t think this fellow does things in half measures… the way I see it, he is a very thorough investigator.”

Article: AFP