THE SUNDAY TIMES has settled a £1million libel with disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong.
The publication paid Armstrong £300,000 in a 2006 court decision after the American cyclist sued The Sunday Times for alleging that he had cheated.
When it emerged the 41-year-old had engaged in a sophisticated doping program in January, the newspaper demanded the money back plus interest.
The Sunday Times announced on Saturday that a “mutually acceptable final resolution” had been reached.
Chief sports writer David Walsh first questioned Armstrong’s achievements in 1999 when he won his first Tour de France.
After the newspaper published an article in 2004 saying questions about Armstrong’s performance needed to be both’ posed and answered’, the American’s lawyers decided to sue the publication, Walsh and then-deputy sports editor Alan English.
The court decided that the underlying meaning of the article accused Armstrong of being ‘a fraud, a cheat and a liar’.
That claim was settled by The Sunday Times in June 2006.