Lance Armstrong’s contentious 2001 Tour of Switzerland drug test was suspicious, but wasn’t proof of EPO doping, even by today’s stringent standards, the laboratory chief who oversaw the procedure has told AFP.

That test taken 11 years ago forms part of the United States Anti-Doping Agency’s (USADA) damning dossier which has condemned the seven-time Tour de France winner as being at the the heart of sport’s biggest ever doping conspiracy.