Abe Streep of Outside magazine reports that Lance Armstrong confronted former cycling teammate Tyler Hamilton outside a restaurant bathroom in Aspen, Colorado, over the weekend, just weeks removed from a 60 Minutes segment in which Hamilton accused Armstrong of using performance-enhancing drugs and of covering up a positive test during the 2001 Tour de Suisse.
During dinner, Hamilton left his table to go to the bathroom. As he walked out of the bathroom, an arm blocked his path. It was Armstrong. The two hadn’t spoken since Hamilton’s 60 Minutes appearance.
“He wanted to get into it,” Hamilton told me this morning. “I was like, ‘Let’s step outside and talk away from the crowd, but he wouldn’t. He said, ‘No one cares.'” Then, according to Hamilton, Armstrong began to berate him.
Advertisement(Armstrong’s version of the encounter is a bit more tame: “I said, ‘Hey, what’s up?'” he says. “It was certainly awkward for both of us. It was truly uneventful.”)
Hamilton went back to his table and the restaurant’s owner, Jodi Larner, a good friend of Armstrong’s, told Hamilton that he could finish his meal but wasn’t welcome back at the restaurant (Cache Cache).
I was eating dinner at a restaurant next door from Hamilton along with a couple of other Outside editors and sales people and a group of Eddie Bauer athletes. As we walked out we passed Hamilton, who was shaken… that’s pretty much where the story ends: two guys who don’t feel very kindly toward one another ran into each other at a bar.
“I was rattled,” Hamilton told me. “I still am.”
Understandable. Sounds like a scene from a Tarantino movie.
Hamilton was hosting bike rides in Aspen for Outside as part of a yearly cycling event the magazine puts on. Armstrong has a house in Aspen.
Armstrong, the seven-time Tour de France winner, stands by his record and said he’s never failed a drug test. CBS News, for its part, stands by its 60 Minutes segment. We stand by waiting for the next famous cyclist to fail a drug test.