Lance Armstrong, the seven-times winner of the Tour de France, has again denied ever taking performance enhancing drugs following a French newspaper report that he used the blood-boosting drug erythropoietin (EPO) in 1999 during his first Tour triumph.

L'Equipe, saying it had access to laboratory documents, reported on Tuesday that six of Armstrong's urine samples collected on the 1999 Tour showed "indisputable" traces of EPO. The newspaper published what it claimed to be a laboratory results sheet that appeared to show six figures revealing traces of EPO. It also published documents from the French cycling federation showing exactly the same figures under Armstrong's name.