Last August French sports daily L'Equipe carried a front page story headlined "Armstrong's Lie" suggesting the Texan had used the illegal blood booster EPO (erythropoeitin) during his first Tour win in 1999.

L'Equipe said traces of banned blood booster EPO had been found on six different occasions in Armstrong's 1999 urine samples by France's national doping testing laboratory of Chatenay-Malabry near Paris.

Now in an embarrassing admission the International Cycling Union says one of its employees was responsible for handing over those confidential test results to the L'Equipe journalist who wrote the article.

Originally the sport's governing body had said they had allowed that member of staff to hand over one dope test sheet because Armstrong had agreed to it.

However now they say that the employee in fact handed over 15 examples and knew that the angle of the article on Armstrong was to show that the Texan had never asked permission to take medication he required after suffering from cancer.

The UCI's admission was triggered by information it had received from Dick Pound, president of the World Anti-Doping Agency, and had held an internal enquiry.

Armstrong issued a point blank rebuttal of the L'Equipe story.