Lance Armstrong allegedly paid rival cyclist $100,000 to throw race

Lance Armstrong (Photo: AP)

Disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong has been accused of trying to bribe a rival cyclist to throw a race.

Italian cyclist Roberto Gaggioli, 51, told Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera that Armstrong handed him a cake box with $100,000 in cash in it and told him his team had decided to throw the 1993 $1 million, multistate race.

“Lance said that my team, Coors Light, had agreed to it. I understood that it had all been decided,”Gaggioli said.

Armstrong had already won two of the three events and stood to win the of $1 million at the finale in Philadelphia.

Gaggioli, who had not yet won any, stood to win only $25,000.

He said he slowed his pedaling towards the finish line at the final event of the Million Dollar Race, letting Armstrong take the lead.

“When Lance made a sign, I turned away as if not to see that he had escaped. He broke away to win on his own,” he said

The Million Dollar race, also known as theThrift Drug Triple Crown, was instrumental in getting Armstrong noticed during his early career.

Last year, revelations of match-fixing and performance enhancing drugs ruined the Tour de France champions career.