Armstrong goes on offensive

Just like he was unwilling to sit back quietly in the peloton, the 7-time Tour de France champion has gone on the offensive to counter allegations that a blood-doping substance was found in his urine from samples taken in 1999.

“There's a setup and I'm stuck in the middle of it,” Armstrong told the Associated Press on Thursday. “I absolutely do not trust that laboratory.”

The lab that Armstrong is talking about recently retested leftover urine samples from the 1999 Tour de France and found the banned substance EPO, according to an article in Tuesday's L'Equipe, a French newspaper.

Later on Thursday, Armstrong took his case to Larry King Live on CNN. King was joined by sportscaster Bob Costas and they grilled Armstrong for the entire 60-minute show.

A full transcript of Armstrong's appearance on the Larry King Live has been filed at The Paceline website. Some of the give and take:

“COSTAS: Here's the head of the World Anti-doping Agency, Richard Pound, a long-time Olympic official. He said this week, “It's not a he said-she said scenario. There were documents. Unless the documents are forgeries or manipulations of them it's a case that has to be answered.”

ARMSTRONG: You know what? It is absolutely a case of he said-she said. What else can it be? Do you think I'm going to trust some guy in a French lab to open my samples and say they're positive and announce that to the world and not give me the chance to defend myself? That's ludicrous. There is no way you can do that.”

Armstrong also put his perspective on the testing procedures.

“The actual test for EPO, what they call electrophoresis, is actually being questioned on a pretty serious level right now. Why do you think they're still working on it? Because it doesn't work that well.

So you throw that in. Then you throw in the fact that these samples were stored for six or seven years. Where were they stored? What was the temperature, et cetera, et cetera? There's not any scientific data that suggests that after five years, samples look and act the same that they did before. It doesn't exist.”

And this being Larry King, the inevitable exchange about girlfriend Sheryl Crow arose.