Anderson: Crow has to know
INVESTIGATORS MUST question singer Sheryl Crow over what she knows about Lance Armstrong’s doping, believes Armstrong’s former assistant Mike Anderson.
Armstrong’s admission to using performance-enhancing drugs in all seven Tour de France wins, after years of vehement denial, has thrust global speculation on former partner Crow and whether she knew about his cheating.
‘‘Did Sheryl Crow know about Lance Armstrong’s drug use?’’ read the banner headline in the Daily Mail, the world’s biggest newspaper website.
Crow was interviewed by federal agents in late 2011. Those details have never been made public. Crow dated Armstrong between 2003 and 2006, years in which Armstrong won the Tour de France three times.
Wellington-based Anderson, the man who in 2004 found a steroid box in Armstrong’s Spanish home having been ordered by the shamed cyclist to expel all traces of former wife Kristin before he arrived with new partner Crow, is adamant Crow must have had detailed knowledge.
‘‘ Everything, absolutely everything. No doubt in my mind,’’ Anderson told Sunday News.
‘‘She would have had to have known everything because she was with him through the Tour. She was on the team bus, she was in the hotel every night in the Tour de France which seems to have been when most of the doping was going on.
‘‘As I understand it, they would use most of the performanceenhancing drugs during the Tour for recovery, the blood bags obviously as well.
‘‘The steroids are used during the off-season to speed recovery from long training rides, the EPO was used so they could store the blood bags later.
‘‘ I didn’t witness any of that stuff, but she would have had to.’’
Anderson is so confident in his view that Crow must have known Armstrong doped that he has previously told both Travis Tygart, head of the United States AntiDoping Agency, and Jeff Novitzky, the US Special Agent and chief investigator of the Armstrong case, to question her.
‘‘I told Jeff Novitzky and Travis Tygart they should talk to her because she was around then.’’