It is a gorgeous sport. It is breathtaking and brilliant, brutal, unforgiving and often terribly dangerous. Landis is right mostly, the entire peloton is on the juice, or they would not be in the peloton. And yet I still hate Pharmstrong and wish him trouble. Not because of his wins, but because of his lying, bullying, hideous behavior. Really Lance? Had to win 7 times? That's what took you down, idiot.

Well said

Armstrong said that of all the physical challenges involved, the 'naughty' thing was miniscule . . . he didn't have some of the physiological (prodigy) traits of LeMond, but he won seven Tour de France races and set the speed record . . . he stuck out, got noticed, jealousies grew, got into a fight with LeMond, . . . lost the fight . . . and the wins went to an inferior rider who most likely was doping harder than Armstrong. Life isn't Fair, but We Ate Up the Drama.

@@leonarddaneman810 Well.... Yes and no. The wins didn't go to "an inferior rider'. No wins were awarded for those Tours. Certainly Lance was an impressive rider but hen he burst onto the scene. He didn't register much with me pre-cancer... despite the world championship and other things. I was just aware of a fast young American but couldn't have named him. His first two TdF wins were something. I watched both in France and there was a lot of disquiet about doping allegations pretty soon after that.... But it was the era. Lance did impress me greatly in his early Tour wins. But there was a deeply unpleasant side to him that almost invited the schadenfreude after his exposure. And as to "Lance said'.... Lance said a lot of things. Many of them were lies or deeply unpleasant personal attacks. I believe little of what Lance says. He arrived (on his post-cancer return) le a whirlwind... But for all his speed, grit and skill, he left a sour taste. The speed record you refer to, if that was Ventoux.... That was always a tell. If it seems unlikely, it is unlikely. I do still revere many proven dopers as heroes of two wheels. LA certainly impressed me on many occasions, but he leaves a sour taste. The others, for the main part, do not.

@@BanjoLuke1 Like Landis said, it was more the drama than the doping, so many were doing it, it almost wasn't cheating anymore. The LeMond vs Armstrong controversy brought out the worst, mostly in Armstrong and his team . . . so, good points all . . . surprised the 'win' wasn't given to the runner up . . .

And they are called the Olympic "games". It used to be all amateurs, then the money started to happen. It just all got too serious and not just a sport, but a way to make a living.

Interested to know where you got this info from? Also I'm pretty sure they would have gone after him anyways ,especially when you consider he put 9 minutes into a pro peloton of riders by himself. I think landis doomed himself with that performance.

Yes, one of the greatest sporting days of all time. He (and his competitors) doped, but there's no way the bigger doping he did in one night was able to create that day. That was Floyd.

I agree! I still remember watching that and listening to Phil and Paul..

the massive influx of testosterone would have created the aggression and unwavering belief to carry out such an ostentatious attack. Pretty sure cadel was juiced up. He was BEATING highly talented juiced up guys. Sastre - a spaniard, riding for bjarne riis. You figure the rest. Contador - don't say 'was', say 'is'. He'd still be on the juice, along with all the others. Sky rides like the posties used to right? In fact they look just like them, with classics guys towing the peloton over the mountains. Gosh I wonder how they do that. Oh that's right, we know how they do that.

as I watched that day, all I could think was Floyd must be doping because that was just too good of a performance. I like the fact that he seems honest and candid about what he did during the doping days.

This is why Lance is still Patron 👌🏼

Why tex was so threatened by him

Including him lol. Imagine winning the tour de France and the world road race in the same year and still have the audacity to claim natty.

@@abone2pick what is natty in English

@@PInk77W1 natural

@@qwerty-rh6ht thx.

@@abone2pick lemond won many many races as a kid against men. I guess he was doping young

It's possible if the whole field was clean and you would see much slower times than you are currently seeing but if a huge contingent of them are doping then it would be impossible to compete without using it. Tyler Hamilton has said that in a one day race like some of the classics its possible for a clean rider to beat a doped rider if he does everything right as far as his tactics and if they fine tune how the team rides with him to support his efforts. However, he said a clean athlete beating a doped rider in a 3 week race like the Tour would be impossible. This is because the doping in cycling doesn't necessarily enhance peak effort but what it does is allow you to do is recover faster so if you go all out today and then your doping allows you to feel completely fresh to be able to go all out tomorrow and then again the next day. A doped rider's power and speed output towards the end of the Tour would not have much drop off from how they were riding on day 1 vs day 21 whereas a clean rider may be able to match the power of a doped rider on the first couple of days but that is it. They would have to hold back in order to have enough at the tank by the end but that would be giving up too much ground early to be able to make it up since doped riders are not really holding back early.

The affects of PEDs on American football is even greater. Until steroids were perfected (by the Soviet bloc) NFL linemen averaged 250 pounds. It then jumped to 315. With no loss of speed. Huh.

​​@@RamaSivamaniemember that you are listening to cheaters, scammers, people who lied professionally. Landis, hamilton, everyone of them is a scumbag, they are not people you can trust. By saying that "everyone is doped", they are just trying to defend themselves, to take off the blame from their shoulders. 😮So don't take their word for granted. Probably the truth is in the middle. Were there a lot of cheaters? Yes, of course. But they were not the majority of the group, they were just the "excellence". And there were also different grades of doping, different stadiums. Armstrong and us postal were the most efficient one, they had obviously the best programs and protection. But don't think that every cheater was doping like armstrong did. Lance was literally the reincarnation of doping.

And theres the reason I cant stand most pro sports! Wherever theres big money theres corruption. If youre going to pay for a sport, pay to participate, not to watch it. Be very careful and thoughtful about who you make your heroes. My mother and father are my heroes.

Oneman Oneman I dont contribute to corruption. At least that I know of! They dont get my money. Many people are not happy with the NFL and we made a little dent in their profits.

Meh, it still goes on. Just look at how they go hard on some no-name cyclist who gets caught but does nothing on the top-ranked guys.

@Leo D'Arcy thanks for the information. May I please ask if you think the peloton was doping when Lemond won the Tour de France?

Emily, if you think Lemond cheated, why don't you come out and say it? And if you do, please point to some evidence.

Espress is actually a pretty poor way of delivering caffeine. Drinking a coffee made in a french cafetiere is a better way. And yet better is taking a caffeine pill as caffeine content in coffee beans can vary wildly from next to nothing to 150mg in a cup.

I like what they are doing. test them, and then test them again. No one should have to take hormone growth, steroids, HGH, etc or do blood doping just to compete.

If you think caffeine and HGH, testosterone, steroids, and of course EPO are on the same level, you're a moron.

Thank you for this comment, I have finally found the stupidest comment of the last decade

That's not gonna happen because it wouldn't make much money. Why you think greg lemond and David Walsh only make movies on lance

OMG that would be perfect casting if you could cast "that thing you do" era Steve anyway.

Kevin Koch B

Mercxx was on the juice, Indurain too... come on

It was not the same juice. EPO and blood doping changed everything. Lemond struggled to keep up in his end Tours, and couldn't figure out why -- it was the dope the other guys were on.

EPO was first studied in 1905. And proceeded from there. 1977 was the human EPO year I believe......so that was/is.....50 years ago.....do the math....look at the winners.......

@@cheetahobx From Wikipedia: "Synthetic EPO was first successfully used to correct anemia in 1987.[31] In 1985, Lin et al isolated the human erythropoietin gene from a genomic phage library and used it to produce EPO.[32] In 1989, the US Food and Drug Administration approved the hormone Epogen for use in certain anemias.[33] "

Tapie only paid the bills. Paul Koechli was the trainer. He was antidoping. My friend was on La Vie Claire and I saw the training documents- pure brilliance using natural methods - periodization with macrocycles and microcycles. Way ahead of his time, Paul was.

Carter, are you implying LeMond was dirty? Why don't you grow a pair and come out and say it?

The enemy of my enemy is my friend

That’s great. I’d love to drink some beers with him.

if I was cornered into riding a charity event, I'd drink too.

Floyd is the man.he is true.I raced against him in so cal and he killed us no dope.

Dark humor, there.

How about Floyd "Jose Canseco" Landis?

Even without money people would cheat . Let alone with a 5 million dollar sponsorship on the line

Yeah, the only thing that makes it cheating versus, say, eating a potassium-rich banana, is the agreement to not do it. It seems unfortunately to declare some things illegal without having effective testing--it simply creates the situation where good ethics loses races. It seems to also create an opportunity for the ruling organization to receive kickbacks.

It's impossible that he was clean in those days. I thought the same of Paco Mancebo, who had a similar style. And he was a client of Doctor Fuentes ...

Cadel Evans.

Of course he did. He was part of EPO Tony’s Clas team. The big Spanish teams were early adopters of EPO

t think Carlos Sastre won the Tour and never got busted. No one ever seems to mention him.

Charly Mottet was known to be clean and his results suffered because of it

There are a variety of them, with a variety of health risks. Possibly the most prevalent example was EPO which increased oxygen-carrying red blood cells. Even as intended it thus thickens blood and can cause typical heart, vascular or pulmonary diseases including simple death, embolisms, stroke. The effects of these conditions would all be long-term. Is the risk progress based on duration of use? I don't know, but for some drugs the answer would definitely be yes--testosterone is common and can cause impotence, heart damage (progressive increase in risk of heart attack), enlarged prostate (difficulty urinating and ultimately increased bladder/UTI infections), liver disease. But the possibly larger risk is the nature of using these drugs "under the radar" without proper controls and with a desire to hide side effects. For example, blood transfusions with athletes' own blood are common, but it can be challenging to handle the blood properly with storage, border crossings and administration all being done in secret. Some athletes, thus, become infected when injected with materials that have become unsafe. Again the risks are diverse and do include death in some cases so it's hard to give a single quantified answer.

No way you think pogacar and vingard are clean lol

La Vie Claire (the team LeMond won the Tour with) was owned by Bernard Tapie, i.e. a man who later did prison for cheating in football (he bribed opposition players in 1993 to get his Marseille team to win the French league). That's something that's barely mentioned but is absolutely important in the debate regarding whether LeMond (or Hinault) were clean, especially when suspect characters & proven cheats/liars are used all the time to discredit those who associated with them.

To be honest, I don't think we'll ever know. They weren't drug testing rigorously back then. Even if there was rampant drug use in the late 80s similar to the 90s, the riders from the 80s can say whatever they like today because there is zero chance now that anything could be proven if there was shady business going.

Hinault winning the last sprint in Paris whilst wearing the yellow yersey says Everything you need to know about that era

Lemond produced his results when EPO was in clinical trials by a California upstart 30 miles from his home, and he set the fastest time trial (20+ km) ever 3 weeks after the drug was launched in the US and Europe. He very likely could have recieved the drug while being treated for his shooting accident. The time trial after EPO was launched he rode 16-18% faster than in any time trial he has ever ridden - VERY impressive

lemond-vo2-numbers-aut-of-the-charts-none-come-close-expect-same-norwegian-gross-country-skiers@@jenspetersen5865

floydsofleadville.com/ whatever you think of the guy, he's legal in CO.

yep, he also have a store close to Sand Diego....Marijuana boi.

Where is "Sand Diego"?

San Diego u idiot ...i miss typed it !

He also has his team now...

Well said that man.

You forgot one of the worst, baseball.

those sports are so big, the clubs are too powerfull.

No way he would have won another tour after 2006. No one has ever gotten a hip replacement and came back the same.

A bunch of young pros died in their sleep and had heart attacks in their twenties back in the 90s mostly in Europe. That's one reason.

These PEDs come with lifelong side-effects. Same applies to any sport.

.....right but still its not fair-ok anyway!!

Yeah that must be it (unfortunately).

They didn't care, they just wanted to keep profiting by not rocking the boat. These guys get paid a lot of money, more than many of the cyclists competing. For guys who were mediocre riders like Paul and Bob , this was a huge way to finally cash in.

Ironray, you really think a top athlete confides with TV presenters about how he cheats? Do you actually have any idea how life works?

Come on they all knew. They were all on the same gravy train 🚂

yeah I couldn't agree more, it's as though he knows nothing about cycling. And sports in general. It's really quite odd.

It seems you have no clue how interviews work. Do you think when an interviewer asks a question it is for themself or their audience?

LA's 7 victories were the most boring TdF's ever. He had no competition.

Likewise. LeMond fell out of competition rather quickly.

Floyd is being honest but he is not familiar with the history of doping in cycling. recombinant human EPO was approved and introduced to the market in 1989 and did not make it's way to the Tour in a significant way until 1991.

@@aarellanod2d and got shot.....

@@simonknowles4267 Then he went on to win the tour. He did get shot but it became irrelevant to him after two Tour wins.

@david ross There are oodles of performance-enhancing drugs, but in endurance sports, EPO (and other erythropoiesis-stimulating agents (ESAs)) was a game-changer because it was so much more effective than the steroids, stimulants, growth hormone, etc. available up to that point. To use the 10,000 meter run as an example, the record in 1966 was 27:39, it improved to 27:22 by 1984--with the switch from cinder to artificial surfaces barely a "real" improvement at all in 18 years. Yet from 1984 to 1998 it improved by a nearly a full minute--to 26:22!

I would agree that he doesn't speak for everyone in that perspective but I do know plenty of people who just don't care about doping and cheating.

Asked myself the same question, 2014 it seems.

it's from 2011 ...look here www.the42.ie/landis-contadors-coach-used-to-be-my-drug-dealer-182844-Jul2011/

Tiago I agree that SKY have probably pushed the rules to the limit, but until they find something akin to EPO/Testosterone/growth Hormone and the like in any of their riders samples then I think it's all VERY small potatoes compared to the Festina and then US postal eras. I'm an old school (sort of)roadracer/time triallist I started in 1989 after the Lemond/Fignon battle and I'm not as big a fan of current racing mainly because my golden era has already gone and I'm 42 now- I am English but the point is I'm not a Team Sky lover or a massive fan so I am speaking very neutrally not defending them- I know Wiggins a little and his father in law is an old club mate of mine in the North West (Lancashire) but I'm still not a massive fan just because of that- However I do think the French and Italians HATE Brits winning "their" races and would also love to destroy Froome even if he was purer than Jesus Christ.

@@SuperDannyb1975 They bloody slapped and spat on him at Alpe d'Huez.

@@SuperDannyb1975 froome r doing races with a pc in his bike and using salbutamol overdoses without be a real ashmatic patience (he said is an ahtlete), so him its not exactly a clean rider!! right!!

Sadly, the cynicism in the sport is so deep it's very hard to see 2 Slovenians, not just 1, as true champions, esp Roglic, who was a former ski jumper ffs....never trained as a cyclist and at that magical age of 27 (Indurain/Lance/Froome) suddenly found winning easy, or as Landis said, found Jesus.

@@marcusmaher-triskellionfil5158 Love the Landis quote ! 🤣

Marc, please cite evidence of Pogacar using PED's. I'd like to read it.

🤣🤣🤣🤣

All sports from elite high school on up.

Contador himself was caught but everyone loves him because he still denied it . As long as you don't tell the truth you good .

The drugs could be untraceable in their system by race day . The test need to occur during their traing camps and on the weeks leading up to a big race.

Any rider entering the TdF. Giro Italia. or other major race should be tested every day , every 4 hours. For the whole year. And at the start and finish of every stage. That mightug be tug he only way you'd get a clean race and even then it would be questionable

Most cyclists, even the cheaters are simply living a dream and suffering hard for it. Many were riding instead of working farms or in a factory. Lancehole betrayed his own teammates, friends, coworkers and fans. He attempted to destroy the lives of any who threatened to expose him. He was a horrible role model not only to those who idolized him, but his own children. What kind of a person is like that?

How about life imprisonment for jay walking? You are brilliant.

Isn't it possible to be both right and bitter? (also, can paranoid people actually have enemies?)