Sunday Times Implied Lance Armstrong Took Drugs, Court Told

The Sunday Times portrayed champion cyclist Lance Armstrong as a "paradigm example" of drug abuse in the sport, a court heard today.

Armstrong's barrister, Richard Spearman QC, said the newspaper had implied the seven-times Tour de France winner was guilty of taking performance-enhancing drugs, a claim he has always denied.

"Armstrong is presented as a paradigm example, he is right at the heart of it," Mr Spearman said. "[The implication is] how could he have won these races in the way he has without having been doped like everybody else?."

Armstrong is suing the Sunday Times over an article from June 13 2004, which discussed allegations of drug use made in a biography co-written by the paper's then chief sports writer, David Walsh, and a French journalist, Pierre Ballester.

The cyclist, who retired from the sport last year after his seventh consecutive Tour triumph, has taken action against the paper, Walsh and the author of the article, Alan English.

Today's hearing at the high court in London, held ahead of a potential trial, attempted to determine what the article would have meant to readers.

Representing Times Newspapers, Andrew Caldecott QC said that although the Sunday Times piece had discussed some of the claims from the biography, entitled LA Confidentiel: Les Secrets de Lance Armstrong, it had not necessarily endorsed them.

"There's no rule that you can't explore grounds of suspicion without straying into [alleging] guilt," he said. "The role of the press is to raise questions, not merely to convict the guilty."

Mr Caldecott said the article raised a series of questions, which extended to examining attitudes to the drugs issue within the world of cycling.

"It sets out a number of concerns, it does not suggest any of them are as yet conclusive evidence of guilt."

The article's headline, LA Confidential, was "not on any view the language of outright accusation of guilt", Mr Caldecott said.

Mr Justice Gray, the judge hearing the case, reserved judgment until later in the week or early next week.