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Lance Armstrong: investigation. Thao Nguyen/AP/Press Association Images
After-taste

Could Armstrong's restaurant bust-up be his biggest mistake?

On Saturday night the former Tour champion confronted a former team-mate who said Armstrong doped. Now the feds will decide if was ‘witness tampering’.

YESTERDAY WE TOLD you about Lance Armstrong’s ‘awkward’ restaurant encounter with former team-mate Tyler Hamilton.

Hamilton recently told American current affairs programme 60 Minutes that seven-time Tour de France winner, Armstrong did indeed – he says – use performance enhancing drugs and failed a drugs test in 2003.

On Saturday night, the pair bumped into each other in a well-known Aspen restaurant.

Hamilton says he went to the bathroom and when he came out, Armstrong was waiting for him and “wanted to get into it”.

He said: “I was like, ‘Let’s step outside and talk away from the crowd’, but he wouldn’t. He said, ‘No one cares.’” Then, Hamilton says, Armstrong began to berate him.

Armstrong confirmed the meeting happened, but that it was “awkward” and “uneventful.”

ESPN report, however, that Armstrong repeatedly asked how much he had been paid to do the television interview, and added that his legal team would “(expletive) destroy you,” “tear you apart on the witness stand,” and “make your life a living (expletive) hell.”

This coincidental meeting could well cost Armstrong however.

Hamilton’s lawyers have now notified federal authorities about the encounter; they expect officials to decide if the arguement amounts to witness tampering. His lawyer said:

“Lance Armstrong is a possible defendant in an investigation that’s been widely reported, and Tyler is a probable witness. When there’s any contact, especially aggressive contact, we as lawyers have a duty to inform the authorities. … What they will do with it, I don’t know.”

In short, this could be Armstrong’s biggest mistake. He is the target of a federal investigation  at the moment and if charges relating to any alleged doping cannot be proven, this may be the stick with which he’s ultimately beaten.

Fans of baseball will remember Barry Bonds was trialed for perjury (though they couldn’t prove that either).

Armstrong and Hamilton have ‘awkward’ meeting in restaurant>

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