Armstrong Faces Expensive Legal Challenge

The allegations that Lance Armstrong tested positive six times for erythropoietin en route to victory in the 1999 Tour de France could cost the Texan dear, according to a lawyer acting for the insurers SCA Communications, who are contesting Armstrong's performance bonuses for five of his seven Tour wins.

"In the coming weeks and months Mr Armstrong will be fighting not merely to keep or lose his race record, winning or losing $5m [the bonus for winning his sixth Tour], but to keep the image that he has built for himself and which, if it were to be shattered, would ruin him in terms of his reputation and thus economically for the rest of his life," said Thibault de Montbrial on the radio station RTL yesterday.

The lawyer told the French sports daily L'Equipe that the allegations it made on Tuesday of the positive tests could prove "a turning point in the legal argument". Armstrong denied the allegations and described the paper's investigation as "tabloid journalism" and a "witch hunt".

"I will simply restate what I have said many times: I have never taken performance-enhancing drugs," Armstrong said. The Texan rider has not failed a drugs test during his 14-year career.

L'Equipe published an investigation into tests carried out for scientific purposes in 2004 on urine samples frozen after the 1999 Tour which it said show six positive tests for Armstrong. Armstrong retired after winning his seventh Tour in July and it is unclear whether he could be stripped of his 1999 win as the tests were not formal anti-doping tests.

SCA began to question Armstrong's probity after the 2004 Tour after the publication of the unauthorised biography LA Confidential: the Secrets of Lance Armstrong. They refused to pay his $5m (£2.75m) bonus for winning a sixth Tour de France that season and requested access to his medical records. Armstrong filed suit and the case remains in arbitration.

Armstrong has strongly rejected the reports in L'Equipe but if the allegations were correct this would strengthen SCA's case, according to De Montbrial, who is also acting for the publishers of LA Confidential, the company La Martinière, in a separate case against Armstrong.

The Tour de France organiser Jean-Marie Leblanc has defended Armstrong's reputation in the face of previous doping allegations but yesterday he said that the American needed to explain himself. "For the first time these are no longer rumours and insinuations. He owes us explanations, to us [the Tour organisers] and all those who follow the Tour. "

In Leblanc's view, the revelation that specimens can be analysed some years later with newly developed technology will change the fight against doping, even if it does not alter Armstrong's Tour record because retrospective sanctions cannot be taken against him.

"It is another weapon, which will mean that no one can cheat with a feeling of impunity. It means that in two, three or four years, if science progresses, it will be able to tell us that this sportsman or that one have been cheating."

The EPO test was first introduced at the Olympic Games in Sydney and has been used since the 2001 Tour de France. None of the tests have subsequently showed Armstrong as being positive.