Lance Armstrong’s team releases series of Floyd Landis e-mails

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Lance Armstrong always fights back. So did his team on Friday, a day and a half after the Wall Street Journal wrote a story revealing e-mails sent by Floyd Landis to various national and international cycling officials as well as to Armstrong in which Landis accused Armstrong and other American cyclists as having engaged in the use of banned performance-enhancing drugs in the years before Landis won, and then was stripped of, his 2006 Tour de France victory.

Landis tested positive for a steroid in that 2006 race but until Wednesday had vehemently denied using any banned substances.

Armstrong, who crashed out of the Amgen Tour of California on Thursday and spent time at a Bakersfield hospital to get eight stitches under his eye and have his elbow X-rayed (negative). His team on Friday posted on the RadioShack website a series of e-mails between Armstrong, Landis, Landis’ doctor, Brent W. Kay,and Andrew Messick of AEG Sports, which runs the Tour of California.

The team website posted this statement: ‘Even a superficial review reveals a troubling, angry and misplaced effort at retribution by Landis for his perceived slights. While these types of repeated, tired and baseless accusations against Lance have been proven false in the past, it is quite regrettable, but telling, that so many in cycling are now attacked.’

Read more later at www.latimes.com/sports.

-- Diane Pucin