IN HOT WATER

Did Lance Armstrong Advocate Doping?

New evidence suggests he was team’s ringleader.

Since August, seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong has been battling charges in front of a grand jury that he has used performance-enhancing drugs in the past. And according to a new Sports Illustrated feature, Armstrong may have been the biggest drug instigator on his team. Sources tell SI that in the late 1990s Armstrong had access to a drug called HemAssist, which in animal studies had been shown to boost the blood's oxygen-carrying capacity. Another source was a fellow rider who claimed Customs officials found syringes and drugs with labels written in Spanish in Armstrong's bag back in 2003. Stephen Swart, who rode with Armstrong in 1995 on the Motorola squad, told SI that Armstrong encouraged his teammates to use a banned blood booster called EPO. Says the magazine: "If a court finds that Armstrong won his titles while taking performance-enhancing drugs, his entourage may come to be known as the domestiques of the saddest deception in sports history."