According to French daily Le Monde, the investigation involves a number of teams including Astana, home of 2009 Tour de France champion Alberto Contador of Spain and American seven-time winner Lance Armstrong. Sports daily L’Equipe backed up Le Monde’s claims regarding Astana, and added that some of the syringes being analyzed had been used by the Kazakh team. “These syringes, used by the team of race winner Alberto Contador, were sent to the Parisian forensics laboratory Toxlab of Professor Gilbert Pepin and are currently being analysed to determine their contents,” read an article on the L’Equipe website.

Meanwhile, Lance is in France, meeting with the President! His latest tweet: “Just finished lunch w/ President Sarkozy at the Palais de L’Elysee. He loves cycling!”

How one cyclist came back from the abuse scene. The inspirational story of Chad Gerlach, courtesy of Sacramento Bee and Bicycle.net.

And how another cyclist, alas, did not. The story of Sam Brown is chronicled in Rolling Stone. See Northshore forum comments queue as well…