'Retired' Gaggioli reveals Armstrong bribed his team with 100k dollars to throw race

Retired Italian rider Roberto Gaggioli has revealed that Lance Armstrong paid him 100,000 dollars in 1993 in order to win the Million Dollar Race in the United States, according to reports.

According to Sport24, Gaggioli said that it was a young American colleague who offered him a panettone as a present and wished him merry Christmas, adding that in the box there were 100,000 dollars in small bills and the colleague was Lance Armstrong.

The Million Dollar Race, which was known as the Thrift Drug Triple Crown, was comprised of the Pittsburgh Classic, the West Virginia Classic and the CoreStates race, the report said.

Armstrong, who was riding for Motorola at the time and is now 42, was officially stripped of his seven Tour de France wins in 2012 after being found guilty of a string of doping offences, the report added.

He publicly admitted that he had cheated earlier this year, the report further said.