Alberto Contador’s team boss Sean Yates says Lance Armstrong has been treated unfairly

The veteran cycling figure goes out to bat for Armstrong

As the 2015 cycling season get into full swing, the ghosts of the Lance Armstrong era still linger. Today, a man very closely associated to the American joined the list of those who feel the disgraced cyclist was hard done by. A few weeks back former UCI chief Pat McQuaid claimed Armstrong was a scapegoat and now Sean Yates, who rode with Armstrong in the 1990s before working with him again on the Discovery Team and at the Astana team, has come out to defend the cyclist. Yates (right) and Armstrong in 1994 Yates, a former sporting director at Team Sky, tells the BBC that Armstrong was 'hunted down' and that he 'took the brunt of the blame' for the doping scandal that broke in 2012. He also believes that the seven-time Tour de France winner was 'treated unfairly'. Yates is back in the sport as he is now the sporting director of Tinkoff-Saxo, the team led by Alberto Contador, who had his own 2010 Tour de France win stripped after failing a doping test.