Cycling Team Is Probed

French police are investigating two-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong’s U.S. Postal Service cycling team after receiving an anonymous letter alleging “suspicious practices” during this year’s Tour de France, a prosecutor’s office spokeswoman said.

The Paris public prosecutor’s office opened a preliminary inquiry Oct. 18 and asked the city’s drug squad to investigate on Nov. 2, said Marie-Annick Darmaillac, a spokeswoman in the prosecutor’s office.

The unsigned letter claimed journalists from French television station France 3 witnessed scenes pointing to possible drug use by the American team, according to French daily newspaper Le Monde. French police declined to comment.

U.S. Postal, which earlier this year fired a rider who failed a drug test, said it was surprised it hadn’t been informed of the investigation.

News of the investigation comes as the trial of nine people involved in the 1998 Tour de France drug scandal drew to a close in the northern French city of Lille. Riders including Richard Virenque, sixth in this year’s Tour de France, admitted taking banned drugs and said the practice was widespread in cycling.

Le Monde reported that a car with a German license plate that was parked in a space reserved for the U.S. Postal Service team after a stage of this year’s Tour de France in the Alps attracted the interest of the France 3 reporters.

Two men allegedly put plastic bags in the car before driving off and dumping the bags on the side of a small road. Compresses, swabs, pill packets and wrappers, notably from Germany, were discovered in the bags, the paper said.

Le Monde reported that the same scenario was repeated several times during the race, with the same car.

Attorneys said the arguments, as presented in the paper, were weak.

“It would be premature and unfair to draw any conclusion from the circumstances described in Le Monde,” said Jodie Cohen-Tanugi, who heads the corporate department of law firm Bird & Bird’s Paris office.

“They are not only unsubstantiated at this stage, but could lead to any number of interpretations.”