Lance Armstrong’s team-mate denies all
Questioned for an hour and a half yesterday, Yaroslav Popovych denied any knowledge of doping whilst riding alongside Lance Armstrong on the Discovery Channel, Astana and RadioShack teams. The 30 year old, who is currently a team-mate of Armstrong on the latter squad, was served with a subpoena on October 22nd while attending the Livestrong Challenge in Austin.
Federal investigators looking into claims of widespread doping on the US Postal Service team and by other squads and riders wanted to find out what Popovych knew.
The answer was nothing, according to the Ukrainian rider, who swore on penalty of perjury that nothing untoward went on.
“He doesn’t know anything about what the focus of the investigation is,” his attorney Ken Miller told the New York Daily News. “He did testify and he’s happy to have it behind him.”
He complained about the tactics to the Los Angeles Times, which originally broke the news that Popovych had been subpoenaed.
“How he was served struck me as a little peculiar,” he said. “It was effected on a guy at a charity ride who was going to leave Texas for a vacation with his girlfriend, a guy from Ukraine who doesn’t speak great English and didn’t really understand what was going on.”
He added that Popovych was told on Wednesday that he was not a target of the investigation.
Popovych joins the list of those who are already known to have testified. These include former team-mate Tyler Hamilton, Floyd Landis’ former physiologist Allan Lim, who worked with Armstrong this season, and Oakley rep Stephanie McIlvain. Several others are rumoured to have also been called, including another former team-mate Kevin Livingston.
There have been reports that at least two unidentified riders have backed up Floyd Landis’ allegations that there was a structured doping programme on the USPS team. The disqualified 2006 Tour winner claimed that Armstrong use performance enhancing substances, and also facilitated their use by others. Armstrong has denied the claims.
The ongoing investigation is headed up by Jeff Novitzky, a federal investigator who previously played a large role in the BALCO case. Landis’ allegations are part of the motivation behind the investigation, but it is understood that investigators first started digging into matters concerning the controversial Rock Racing team run by Michael Ball.
It signed up Hamilton and many other riders who had been connected to doping practices, embracing a Bad Boy image, but fell apart when Ball’s Rock and Republic clothing company got into financial difficulties.