Former teammate reportedly implicates Lance Armstrong in illegal doping practices

A former teammate of Lance Armstrong has told federal investigators that the seven-time Tour de France winner participated in illegal doping practices when both were members of the U.S. Postal Service cycling team, the New York Times reported Wednesday night.

Federal prosecutors are investigating Armstrong’s possible involvement in doping. But the former teammate, who the paper did not identify but said had never tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs, has not been called before the grand jury that has been convened in Los Angeles to investigate the case, the report said.

Doping allegations against Armstrong surfaced in May when disgraced cyclist Floyd Landis, who also rode on that U.S. Postal team and later was stripped of his 2006 Tour de France title after testing positive, not only confessed to his own doping practices but said he had witnessed Armstrong and three other American teammates, Levi Leipheimer, George Hincapie and Dave Zabriskie, doing the same.

Landis also accused the team of selling bicycles to help finance a systematic doping program.

Armstrong’s Los Angeles-based attorney Bryan Daly, last week told the Los Angeles Times that he found the circumstances of the federal investigation “murky to me. I don’t see where this investigation is going.”

On Wednesday, he told the New York Times that the accusations about Armstrong were lies. “They just want them to incriminate Lance Armstrong and that’s my concern,” Daly said. “To the extent that there’s anyone besides Floyd Landis saying things, the bottom line is, if you take away the soap opera and look at the scientific evidence, there is nothing.”

Armstrong was in Denver on Wednesday to help promote a new American stage race that will come to Colorado next month but refused to comment on the federal investigation. His spokesman did not return messages seeking comment Wednesday night.

diane.pucin@latimes.com

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