Cyclist Mark Cavendish sprayed with urine at Tour de France

British cyclist Mark Cavendish claims he was doused with urine by a lunatic spectator during the eleventh stage of the Tour de France Tuesday, reports The Telegraph.

Cavendish, who first thought it was water, made the stomach-turning discovery by tasting the liquid.

The 28-year-old declined to comment on the incident but that didn't stop his team manager, Patrick Lefevere, from expressing his disappointment.

"Probably some spectators were not very pleased with what happened yesterday and they yelled to him and then one other idiot threw urine at him," Lefevere said in reference to Cavendish’s crash with Tom Veelers near the end of Tuesday’s 10th stage. "I regret this. I always felt that cycling fans were gentlemen, enthusiastic people."

"Yes, that's true I think. I was behind him. I didn't see it, but I think it's true," Omega Pharma-Quick Step team press officer Alessandro Tegner said.

Tegner said the liquid smelled like urine and it was "all over him," and said Cavendish talked about the incident after completing the time trial.

"He said: 'I really don't know what's going on,'" Tegner said.

Tegner said the team does not know exactly where it happened on the 33-kilometer (20-mile) time-trial course to Mont-Saint-Michel on the Brittany coast.

Disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong didn’t see what all the fuss was about in expressing his opinion on Twitter. "why all the sudden shock and outrage. this has been happening for 100 years in some form or another," he tweeted.

@dwuori why all the sudden shock and outrage. this has been happening for 100 years in some form or another. piss, spit, fists, etc.
— Lance Armstrong (@lancearmstrong) July 10, 2013

"It ruins the whole atmosphere for the spectators coming to the sport. One individual doing that just leaves a bit of a bad taste in the mouth,” Tour leader Chris Froome said. “And a bad taste in Mark's mouth.”

That's one way to get a yellow jersey.

Lance Armstrong: 'Impossible' to win Tour de France without doping

Lance Armstrong  came back on Friday to haunt the 100th edition of cycling’s showcase race the Tour de France, by telling the French newspaper Le Monde he would never have won without doping.

Armstrong’s interview with the publication was surprising on many levels, not least because of his long-antagonistic relationship with the respected French daily that first reported in 1999 that corticosteroids were found in the American’s urine as he was riding his way to the first of his seven Tour wins. In response, Armstrong complained he was being persecuted by “vulture journalism, desperate journalism.”

In Friday's interview — published in French — Armstrong claimed that it was “impossible” to win the Tour without doping when he was racing. Armstrong already told television talk show host Oprah Winfrey when he finally confessed this January that doping was just “part of the job” of being a pro cyclist.

Not one  to shy away from the limelight or minimize his cheating, Armstrong told Le Monde he still considers himself the record-holder for Tour victories, even though all seven of his titles were stripped from him last year for doping. He also said his life has been ruined by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency investigation that exposed as lies his years of denials that he and his teammates doped, according to The Associated Press.

The interview was the latest blast from cycling’s doping-tainted recent history to tarnish the 100-year-old race.

Previously, Armstrong’s former rival on French roads, 1997 Tour winner Jan Ullrich, confessed to blood-doping for the first time with a Spanish doctor. French media also reported that a Senate investigation into the effectiveness of anti-doping controls pieced together evidence of drug use at the 1998 Tour by Laurent Jalabert, a former star of the race now turned broadcaster.

The banned hormone erythropoietin, or EPO, wasn’t detectable by cycling’s doping controls until 2001 and so was widely abused because it prompts the body to produce oxygen-carrying red blood cells, giving a big performance boost to endurance athletes.

Armstrong was clearly talking about his own era, rather than the Tour today. Le Monde reported that he was responding to the question: “When you raced, was it possible to perform without doping?”

“That depends on which races you wanted to win. The Tour de France? No. Impossible to win without doping. Because the Tour is a test of endurance where oxygen is decisive,” Le Monde quoted Armstrong as saying.

Some subsequent media reports about Le Monde’s interview concluded that Armstrong was saying doping is still necessary now, rather than when he was winning the Tour from 1999-2005. That suggestion provoked dismay from current riders, race organizers and the sport’s governing body, the International Cycling Union or UCI.

“If he’s saying things like he doesn’t think that it’s possible to win the Tour clean, then he should be quiet — because it is possible,” said American rider Tejay van Garderen of the BMC team.

Asked later by The Associated Press to clarify his comments, Armstrong said on Twitter that he was talking about the period from 1999-2005. He indicated that doping might not be necessary now.

On Friday, a number of Tour de France riders hit back at Armstrong dismissing the claims by the shamed American cyclist, saying his remarks hurt their credibility.