 Armstrong adamantly denied this, and the American press generally supported him.Armstrong contended, among other things, that it would have made no sense for him to dope since he lived in France, which has long had some of the strictest anti-doping laws in the world, for most of the year.Armstrong was criticized for working with controversial Italian trainer Michele Ferrari, who later claimed that the two were introduced by Belgian cyclist Eddy Merckx in 1995.