From the Archives: Greg LeMond Romps at the 1986 Tour

In need of a breather from researching and writing about doping in cycling, I today decided to revisit the legend of Greg LeMond, America's first Tour de France champion, and perhaps the only one of three to have won the race without the use of banned PED's. (I still ended-up writing about doping, though...)

The disgraced Floyd Landis was stripped of his 2006 Tour crown (the first rider in the 105-year history of the race to lose the title because of a doping offense), whilst Lance Armstrong was revealed via retroactive testing to have used EPO in 1999 during his first Tour "win."

Though I truly don't have any ill-feelings for Floyd, Lance, Ivan Basso or any of the other "stars" of cycling who've been linked to doping (either directly or indirectly) in recent years, I likewise feel little very little admiration for them. Marco Pantani  and Jan Ullrich ellicit my sympathy, but LeMond remains such a legend...I hope he prevails in his lawsuit, though some commentators think it to be a long shot.



Updated Notes: 1) Interesting commentary on the trial here. 2) Charles Howe contacted me today (January 26, 2010) to advise me that he is the author of the document I've embedded below; he provided a URL to an updated version of it, which refers to one of six parts to a larger presentation. 3) On August 23, 2005, the French sporting newspaper L’Équipe reported that frozen samples of Armstrong’s urine from six separate stages of the 1999 Tour had tested positive for r-EPO using a more sensitive and still-experimental procedure.
Lance Armstrong Doping History