Lance Armstrong Investigation: George Hincapie's Response

CBS News reported yesterday that when Jeffrey Novitzky's investigation brought Lance Armstrong's number one lieutenant and close friend, George Hincapie, in to testify, that Hincapie confirmed that Lance had doped by using EPO and testosterone. Here is the quote from the CBS website where you can read about it and also watch a video that was shown on the news yesterday:

It appears the federal investigation, with its subpoenas and sworn grand jury testimony, has broken cycling's code of silence, Pelley reports. It's not known how many U.S. Postal riders were using performance-enhancing drugs, but "60 Minutes" has learned at least three have told federal authorities they used banned substances and witnessed Armstrong using them too.

One of those riders is Armstrong's other close teammate, George Hincapie. The broadcast has been told that now, for the first time, Hincapie has testified to federal investigators that he and Armstrong supplied each other with the blood-booster EPO and discussed having used testosterone, another banned substance, during their preparation for races.

 As I mentioned yesterday, if this is true, this is going to be huge for Novitzky's investigation since the other witnesses to Lance's doping (Andreu, Landis and Hamilton) can be painted by Lance to have an axe to grind or ulterior motives. George, however, is going to be hard to paint as someone who is lying to show Lance was a doper. He was arguably Lance's most loyal teammate and the only teammate who worked for Lance during each of his seven Tour de France wins.

Interestingly, it appears that CBS News did not get this information directly from George. Here is George's stand as reported by ESPN:

"I can confirm to you that I never spoke with 60 Minutes," Hincapie stated through his attorney. "I have no idea where they got their information...As for the substance of anything in the 60 Minutes story, I cannot comment on anything relating to the ongoing investigation."

So, what this means is that George is denying that he spoke to 60 Minutes but not denying that he told the Grand Jury that Lance used EPO and testosterone. Sounds like 60 Minutes probably has some good information.

Where they got the information is another question...I bet a lot of you will be watching 60 Minutes this Sunday.