The titanic legal battle between Lance Armstrong and the federal government has entered a sensitive new frontier β Armstrong's sex life. The government wants to know: Did a key witness in the Armstrong doping scandal have an intimate relationship with him? The issue came up June 9 during a pretrial deposition involving Stephanie McIlvain, a former representative for Oakley, the sunglasses company and one of Armstrong's former sponsors.
McIlvain questions about whether she and Armstrong had shared an intimate personal relationship," according to court documents filed Tuesday by Armstrong's attorneys. Her responses are under seal, and Armstrong's attorney asked the government to "confirm they would not ask similar questions of Armstrong or any other witness.
Armstrong's attorneys say "such questions are irrelevant, designed only to embarrass or annoy, and ought to be forbidden. The government has indicated this line of questioning is relevant because it relates to McIlvain's "bias. An attorney for McIlvain declined comment. She has been a key figure in the Armstrong saga, dating to when she was present at an Indiana hospital with Armstrong and others in That's when Armstrong allegedly admitted to his doctor that he used performance-enhancing drugs, according to two other witnesses.
But McIlvain later testified under oath in a different legal proceeding in that she didn't remember hearing the alleged confession β a hot topic of dispute that's been subject to various inquiries over the last decade, including a federal grand jury investigation in At the time of the hospital incident, Armstrong was undergoing cancer treatment. Nine years later, in , Armstrong was locked in a legal battle with SCA Promotions, a sports insurance company that refused to pay the bonus it owed him for winning the Tour de France because it suspected Armstrong had cheated in the race.
McIlvain testified as part of that case. So did Armstrong's former teammate, Frankie Andreu, and his wife, Betsy, who said they were in the same hospital room with McIlvain in and heard Armstrong's doping confession. Without corroborating testimony from McIlvain or others, Armstrong was able to vilify the Andreus and continue to claim he never used such drugs. It also helped him retain his sponsors, which included Oakley, where McIlvain's husband served as vice president.
