Lance Armstrong injected himself with EPO. This was the revelation of his former teammate Tyler Hamilton.

In an interview in “60 Minutes” shown on the CBS Evening News Thursday, Hamilton revealed that he and the seven-time Tour de France champion took the performance-enhancing drug EPO to cheat in the races.

According to Hamilton, Lance Armstrong took the blood-booster EPO during the 1999 Tour de France as well as prior to the 2000 and 2001 race. Armstrong was champion of the prestigious cycling event from 1999-2005.

Hamilton narrated that he saw the EPO in Armstrong’s refrigerator and saw him inject it several times that same way that the other members of the team did. Aside from injecting himself with the drug, Hamilton revealed that Armstrong also took testosterone and was involved in blood transfusion. EPO is an endurance boosting substance that increases the number of red blood cells in the body.

The seven-time Tour champion has vehemently denied the accusation and has never failed a drug test. However, Federal authorities are conducting an investigation whether he and his former teammates at the US Postal team did get involved in a systematic doping program.

Hamilton’s revelation came one year after another Lance Armstrong teammate Floyd Landis likewise accused Armstrong and the team of using drugs. Landis also failed a drug test during the 2001 Tour de Suisse. Landis was stripped of the 2006 Tour de France title after he was found to have taken synthetic testosterone. He denied injecting himself of performance-enhancing drugs before saying that he was doping for majority of his career.

Mark Fabiani, Armstrong’s lawyer, denied the accusation on behalf of his client. He said that Hamilton only wants to make money by writing a book and lying about the real story in order to increase his chance with publishers. Fabiani said that the fact remains that Lance Armstrong is the most tested athlete in all of sports having passed almost 500 tests in more than two decades of competition.

After Hamilton’s revelation, Lance Armstrong launched a website denying the claims and tweeted: “20+ year career. 500 drug controls worldwide, in and out of competition. Never a failed test. I rest my case.”

Recently, American investigators sought the help of their colleagues in France with their request for urine samples of the entire US Postal team mentioning the name of Armstrong. The said samples were taken from the members of the team for anti-doping controls and subsequently frozen and stored by a French anti-doping agency. The said request included urine samples from the 1999 Tour de France.

French authorities, on the other hand, have been conducting interviews and getting witness statements from individuals associated with the US Postal team or connected in French anti-doping during the time Lance Armstrong was the most dominant cyclist in the Tour de France.

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