Lance Armstrong treated unfairly, says former team-mate Sean Yates

Former Discovery Channel and Team Sky sporting director Sean Yates tells BBC South East Today that disgraced cyclist and former team-mate Lance Armstrong has been unfairly treated.

American Armstrong, 43, was stripped of his record seven Tour de France titles and banned from sport for life by the United States Anti-Doping Agency (Usada) in August 2012 following a doping scandal.

Yates rode with a young Armstrong at Motorola and, after moving into coaching, was reunited with the American at Discovery in 2005, when Armstrong won the last of his seven now rescinded titles.

The duo also worked together in 2009 at Astana.

Yates says Armstrong was "a stand-out figure" who was "hunted down" and "took the brunt of the blame" in the drugs scandal of 2012.

Yates, 54, will return to the Tour de France in 2015 after he joined Tinkoff-Saxo as a sports director.