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World of Sport

03rd Feb 2015

Lance Armstrong cited in hit and run case after initially letting girlfriend take the blame

Uh oh...

Sean Nolan

This doesn’t sound good…

Lance Armstrong is back in the news again but this time, it is not for a reason he will like. Hot on the heels of his first interview since Oprah with the BBC last week, Armstrong has now been cited by police for involvement in a hit and run of two parked cars on December 28 last year in Aspen.

According to a report from AP, as SUV hit two parked cars in the ski town that night and when questioned by police, Armstrong’s girlfriend Anna Hansen said she was driving.

However, Armstrong has now been cited by police after Hansen admitted she lied to keep the attention off the former cyclist, a decision they both agreed to.

The AP report says the incident occured after ‘a night of partying’.

The Aspen Daily News has much more on the story. They say that police were called to West Francis Street on December 29 by a person whose care had been damaged. The car responsible was found on West North Street, and it had significant damage and was regsitered to Armstrong.

They quote the police report, written by an officer called Rick Magnuson.

“Hansen told us that she was driving home from an Aspen Art Museum party the previous night,” Magnuson wrote in the police report. “Hansen told me that she drove the GMC home because ‘Lance had a little bit to drink so I was driving. I was not drinking.’”

Hansen’s story was not believed by the officer and when she was questioned a few days later, she said this.

“I asked Hansen if Armstrong asked her to take the blame for the accident once they got home,” Magnuson wrote. “She replied, ‘No, that was a joint decision, and, um, you know we’ve had our family name smeared over every paper in the world in the last couple of years and honestly, I’ve got teenagers, I just wanted to protect my family because I thought, ‘Gosh, Anna Hansen hit some cars, it’s not going to show up in the papers, but Lance Armstrong hit some cars, it’s going to be a national story.’”

The report goes on to say that Hansen said that Armstrong was not drunk and that they did return to the scene of the crash after parking a few streets away.

Armstrong is due to appear in court on March 17