Lance Armstrong climbed down off his bike a month ago. His counterattacking skills, though, remain as sharp as ever. A day after the director of the Tour de France said the seven-time champion “fooled” race officials and the sporting world by doping, Armstrong responded to the growing controversy with harsh words for everyone connected to a report in L’Equipe, the French sports daily that made the original accusation.

“Where to start?” Armstrong mused during a conference call Wednesday from Washington. “This has been a long, love-hate relationship between myself and the French.”

He went on to lambaste L’Equipe and question the science and ethics of the suburban Paris laboratory that stored frozen samples from the 1999 tour, tested them only last year and leaked the results used in the newspaper's report. He even suggested officials of the Tour and sports ministries who were involved in putting the story together could wind up facing him in court.

“Right now,” Armstrong said, “we're considering all our options.”

But a moment later, he added, “In the meantime, it would cost a million and a half dollars and a year of my life. I have a lot better things to do with the million and a half ... a lot better things I can do with my time. Ultimately, I have to ask myself that question.”

What convinced Armstrong to go on the offensive were remarks earlier Wednesday by tour director Jean-Marie Leblanc. He said L’Equipe's report that six urine samples Armstrong provided during his first tour win in 1999 tested positive for the red blood cell-booster EPO had convinced him the cyclist had cheated.

“The ball is now in his court,” Leblanc told the newspaper. “Why, how, by whom? He owes explanations to us and to everyone who follows the Tour. Today, what L’Equipe revealed shows me that I was fooled. We were all fooled.”

But in one sense, Armstrong felt the same way, saying he talked to Leblanc on the telephone after the Tour director spoke to L’Equipe, but before those remarks were published.

“I actually spoke to him for about 30 minutes and he didn't say any of that stuff to me personally,” Armstrong said. “But to say that I've 'fooled' the fans is preposterous. I've been doing this a long time. We have not just one year of only 'B' samples; we have seven years of 'A' and 'B' samples. They've all been negative.”

Armstrong has insisted throughout his career that he has never taken drugs to enhance his performance. In his autobiography, “It’s Not About the Bike,” he said he was administered EPO during his chemotherapy treatment to battle cancer.

“It was the only thing that kept me alive,” he wrote.

Armstrong questioned the validity of testing samples frozen six years ago, how those samples were handled since, and how he could be expected to defend himself when the only confirming evidence - the 'A' sample used for the 1999 tests - no longer existed. He also charged officials at the suburban Paris lab with violating World Anti-Doping Agency code for failing to safeguard the anonymity of any remaining 'B' samples it had.

“It doesn't surprise me at all that they have samples. Clearly they've tested all of my samples since then to the highest degree. But when I gave those samples,” he said, referring to 1999, “there was not EPO in those samples. I guarantee that.”

Two anti-doping authorities said urine samples from 1999, if stored properly, still could produce legitimate EPO test results.

“I believe they may well, if they have been properly stored _ without access to outside people so they cannot be tampered with. Also in a refrigerator or deep frozen,” Arne Ljungqvist, chairman of the International Olympic Committee's medical commission, said Wednesday in a phone interview with The Associated Press.

Christiane Ayotte, director of Montreal's anti-doping laboratory, said EPO can disappear from samples within a few months. But it cannot be formed in the sample over time if it was not originally there.

“I have no doubt that if the lab in Paris found EPO, it was there,” she said in an e-mail interview with The Associated Press. “Let's put it differently, when recombinant (synthetic) EPO is detected, it is because it's in the sample. Time will decrease the amount of EPO, not increase or form it.”

EPO, formally known as erythropoietin, was on the list of banned substances when Armstrong won his first Tour, but there was no effective test to detect the drug. But Armstrong's assurances he never took performance-enhancing drugs has been good enough for his sponsors. A previously scheduled meeting with several brought him to Washington, and he said afterward, “We haven't seen any damage.”

But Armstrong acknowledged the same was likely true at L’Equipe.

“Obviously, this is great business for them,” he said. “Unfortunately, I'm caught in the cross-hairs.

“And at the end of day,” he added, “I think that's what it's all about ... selling newspapers. And it sells.”