SEVEN-TIME TOUR de France winner Lance Armstrong took the performance-enhancing drug EPO according to a former team-mate.

Tyler Hamilton has said in an interview with US current affairs programme “60 minutes” that he himself used performance-enhancers and claims that Armstrong also used EPO, a drug which increases red blood cell count and enhances endurance.

Armstrong has flat out denied the claims on Twitter:

His former team-mate Hamilton, 40, has already served a two year ban for blood doping from 2005-2007 and claims that he saw Amrstrong - who he rode with on the US Postal team – using EPO during the 1999 Tour.

He told “60 Minutes”:

I saw [EPO] in his refrigerator… I saw him inject it more than one time.

Allegations that members of the hugely successful US Postal team used banned substances are still the subject of a federal investigation in the United States, BBC reports.

And it’s not the first time Armstrong has been accused by former team-mates of using performance-enhancing drugs.

In 2010, former team-mate and 2006 Tour de France winner Floyd Landis claimed Armstrong used banned substanches throughout his career.

Armstrong announced his second retirement, having earlier made a comeback to cycling, earlier this year and once again denied all allegations that he used drugs.

Meanwhile, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) could strip Tyler Hamilton of his 2004 cycling gold medal following the American’s admission of doping.

IOC vice president Thomas Bach told The Associated Press on Friday. Bach said the committee will examine Hamilton’s statements that he doped throughout his career.