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Lance Armstrong Causes Twitter Storm After Hinting at Fabian Cancellara Doping Links

...few other people could cause such a storm with such a short response

Ex-Tour de France hero turned pantomime villain Lance Armstrong caused a Twitter storm over the weekend after hitting out at Fabian Cancellara following the Swiss cycling legend’s gold medal win in the Olympic time trial.

The win was Cancellara’s second time trial gold, following on from his win eight years ago in Beijing, and was heralded around the cycling community as an outstanding achievement for a rider now in the autumn of his career.

Lance’s response came after Fabian’s sponsors Trek-Segafredo tweeted out “BOOM! @f_cancellara is the Olympic Time Trial champion”. The American ex-rider replied with one word: “Luigi!!”.

Now, this may not seem like much of a jibe, but what the tweet implies is a touchy subject, and unfortunately has nothing to do with the famously green-clad Italian plumber or his brother Mario.

The tweet refers to the Operation Puerto doping case, with ‘No.24 Clasicomano Luigi’ being a codename allocated to one of the blood bags recovered from Eufemiano Fuentes, a doping doctor at the clinic of Madrid, back in 2006.

Rumours at the time linked the bag to Fabian Cancellara and Thomas Dekker, a fellow former cyclist from the Netherlands.

Though of course Fabian has always denied any links to the bag and any doping scandals, Dekker actually took it upon himself to reply to Armstrong’s tweet, saying: “Wasn’t me..”

The UCI have now obtained samples from the man blood bags recovered from the Madrid clinic in question, so it’s possibly that the owner of the bag may soon be confirmed, as DNA sampled can be checked against athlete’s profiled already held.

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