american doping tour de france

Lance Armstrong Reveals Exactly How He Got Away With Cheating for So Long

The disgraced superstar told Bill Maher the truth about his secret method for evading anti-doping testers.

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“I’ve been tested 500 times and I’ve never failed a drug test.”

Which has led to a nagging question that has lingered for so many: As one of the highest-profile athletes on Earth, how did he get away with it for so long?

He cheated . We know that. But now, thanks courtesy of a new wide-ranging interview with politico-comedian Bill Maher, we have more insight into how Lance Armstrong cheated.

“There was no way around the test,” Armstrong recently said on Maher’s Club Random podcast. He continued:

“When I pissed in the cup and they tested the piss in the cup, it passed. Now, the reality and the truth of all of this is, some of these substances, primarily the one that is the most beneficial, has a four-hour half-life. So certain substances, whether it be cannabis or anabolics, or whatever, have much longer half-lives.”

The “one that was most beneficial” that Armstrong mentions was erythropoietin (EPO), a red-blood-cell-boosting hormone that increases oxygen transportation throughout the body, thereby improving aerobic performance.

“You could smoke that joint and go to work driving your tractor (and) in two weeks test positive, because the half-life is much longer,” Armstrong told Maher. “With EPO, which was the rocket fuel that changed not just our sport but every endurance sport, you have a four-hour half-life, so it leaves the body very quickly. With a four-hour half-life, you can just do the math.”

By “the math,” it can be assumed the Armstrong was referencing the length of an average Grand Tour stage, meaning, by the time a stage was finished and Armstrong might be tested, the level of EPO in his system was undetectable.

After years of speculation and accusation by his detractors, and subsequent denial by Armstrong and his team, the Austin, Texas native admitted to Oprah Winfrey in a 2013 interview that he had, in fact, cheated.

His fall from grace was swift, with his then-record seven Tour de France victories stripped, a lifetime ban from competitive cycling handed down by the UCI, a remittance of his Olympic medal, a $5-million-dollar settlement paid to the United States government, and countless lost endorsement revenue.

After a few years spent under the radar , Armstrong has been slowly making his way back into the public conversation. He hosts a popular cycling podcast called The Move alongside former teammate George Hincapie, their former manager Johan Bruyneel, and Austinite JB Hager. Armstrong has also appeared on a reality television show that sent several celebrities to a simulated version of Mars. He even got back into the bike scene, when direct-to-consumer brand Ventum announced Armstrong as one of their endorsees.

There’s a ton more in Maher and Armstong’s nearly 90-minute conversation than the EPO admission. And if you’re one of the people who still defends Armstrong, or you’ve grown ambivalent, the podcast is well worth the time. But if you still seethe at the mention of the one-time superhero, you might want to sit this one out.

Michael Venutolo-Mantovani is a writer and musician based in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He loves road and track cycling, likes gravel riding, and can often be found trying to avoid crashing his mountain bike. 

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MONTAIGU, FRANCE - JULY 04: TOUR DE FRANCE 1999, 1.Etappe, MONTAIGU - CHALLANS; Lance ARMSTRONG/USA - GELBES TRIKOT - (Photo by Andreas Rentz/Bongarts/Getty Images)

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A look at the rise and fall of Lance Armstrong , who beat testicular cancer to win a record seven Tour de France titles, then was found guilty of and admitted to doping for the majority of his career ...

Aug. 2, 1992: Armstrong, then a 20-year-old amateur cyclist who had left triathlon because it wasn’t an Olympic sport, makes his Olympic debut at the Barcelona Games. He finishes 14th in the road race as the top American, missing a late breakaway. “I don’t think it was one of my better days, unfortunately,” Armstrong said on NBC. “Last couple weeks, everything has been perfect, but today, I just didn’t have what it took.” A week later, Armstrong finished last of 111 riders in his pro debut.

Aug. 29, 1993: Wins the world championships road race, becoming the second U.S. man to win a senior road cycling world title after three-time Tour de France winner Greg LeMond . Armstrong prevails by 19 seconds over Spain’s Miguel Indurain , who won five straight Tours de France from 1991-95. “I’m not sure I’m cut out to be a Tour racer,” Armstrong said, according to the Chicago Tribune . “I love the Tour de France; it’s my favorite bike race, but I’m not fool enough to sit here and say I’m going to win it. For the time being, I’m a one-day rider.”

Aug. 3, 1996: After failing to finish three of his first four Tour de France appearances (and placing 36th in the other), is sixth in the Atlanta Olympic time trial. “This was a big goal and something that I wanted to do well in and wanted the American people to see success,” Armstrong said on NBC. “The legs just weren’t there to win or to medal. I have to move forward and look to the next thing.”

Oct. 2, 1996: Diagnosed with testicular cancer. A day later, he undergoes surgery to have the malignant right testicle removed. Five days later, he begins chemotherapy. Six days later, Armstrong holds a press conference to announce it publicly, saying the cancer spread to his abdomen (and, later, his brain). He described it as “between moderate and advanced” and that his oncologist told him the cure rate was between 65 and 85 percent. “I will win,” Armstrong says. “I intend to beat this disease, and further, I intend to ride again as a professional cyclist.”

Oct. 27, 1996: Betsy Andreu later testifies that, on this date, Armstrong told a doctor at Indiana University Hospital that he had taken performance-enhancing drugs; EPO, testosterone, growth hormone, cortisone and steroids. Andreu said she and others were in a room to hear this. Her husband, Frankie Andreu , an Armstrong cycling teammate, confirmed her recollection to the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA). Armstrong, in admitting to doping in 2013, declined to address what became known as “the hospital room confession.”

January 1997: Establishes the Lance Armstrong Foundation, later called Livestrong, to support cancer awareness and research. Is later declared cancer-free.

Feb. 15, 1998: Returns to racing. Later in September, finishes fourth in his Grand Tour return at the Vuelta a Espana, one of the three Grand Tours after the Giro d’Italia and Tour de France.

1999 Tour de France: Achieves global fame by winning cycling’s most prestigious event in his first Tour de France start since his cancer diagnosis. Armstrong was not a pre-event favorite, but he won the opening 4.2-mile prologue to set the tone. He won all three time trials and, by the end, distanced second-place Alex Zulle by 7 minutes, 37 seconds in a Tour that lacked the previous two winners -- Jan Ullrich and Marco Pantani . Armstrong faced doping questions during the three-week Tour. An Armstrong urine sample revealed a small amount of a corticosteroid, after which Armstrong produced a prescription for a cream to treat saddle sores to justify it. “There’s no secrets here,” Armstrong said after Stage 14. “We have the oldest secret in the book: hard work.”

2000 Tour de France: With Ullrich and Pantani in the field, Armstrong crushed them on Stage 10, taking the yellow jersey by four minutes. He ends up winning the Tour by 6:02 over Ullrich, who over the years became the closest thing Armstrong had to a rival. In a Nike commercial that debuted in January that year , Armstrong again attacked his critics, saying, “Everybody wants to know what I’m on. What am I on? I’m on my bike, busting my ass six hours a day. What are you on?”

Sept. 30, 2000: Takes bronze in the Sydney Olympic time trial, behind Russian Viatcheslav Ekimov (a teammate on Armstrong’s Tour de France teams) and Ullrich. Armstrong would be stripped of the bronze medal 12 years later for doping. “I came to win the gold medal,” he said on NBC. “When you prepare for an event and you come and you do your best, and you don’t win, you have to say, I didn’t deserve to win.”

2001 Tour de France: Third straight Tour title. In Stage 10 on the iconic Alpe d’Huez, Armstrong gave what came to be known as “The Look,” turning back to stare in sunglasses at Ullrich, then accelerating away to win the stage by 1:59 over the German. “I decided to give a look, see how he was, then give a little surge and see what happened,” Armstrong said after the stage. Also that year, LeMond gives a famous quote to journalist David Walsh on Armstrong: “If it is true, it is the greatest comeback in the history of sport. If it is not, it is the greatest fraud.”

2002 Tour de France: Fourth title in a row -- by 7:17 over Joseba Beloki sans Ullirch and Pantani -- with few notable highlights. Maybe the most memorable, French fans yelling “Dope!” as he chased Richard Virenque (another disgraced doper) up the esteemed Mont Ventoux. Armstrong would be named Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year.

2003 Tour de France: By far the closest of the Tour wins -- by 1:01 over Ullrich -- with two very close calls. In Stage 9, Armstrong detoured through a field to avoid a crashing Beloki, who broke his right femur and never contended at a Grand Tour again. In Stage 15, Armstrong’s handlebars caught a spectator’s yellow bag . He crashed to the pavement, remounted and won the stage, upping his lead from 15 seconds to 1:07 over Ullrich.

2004 Tour de France: Record-breaking sixth Tour de France title. Jacques Anquetil , Eddy Merckx , Bernard Hinault and Indurain shared the record of five, and now share the record again after Armstrong’s titles were stripped. Earlier in 2004, the Livestrong yellow bracelet/wristband is introduced. Tens of millions would be sold. He skips the 2004 Athens Olympics, which began three weeks after the Tour ended.

April 18, 2005: Announces he will retire after the 2005 Tour de France. “My children are my biggest supporters, but at the same time, they are the ones who told me it’s time to come home,” Armstrong says. On the same day, former teammate and 2004 Olympic time trial champion Tyler Hamilton is banned two years for blood doping.

2005 Tour de France: Finishes career with seventh Tour de France title. Armstrong remains defiant until the end. In his victory speech atop a podium on the Champs-Elysees, he says with girlfriend Sheryl Crow looking on, “The last thing I’ll say, for the people that don’t believe in cycling, the cynics and the skeptics, I"m sorry for you. I’m sorry you can’t dream big. And I’m sorry you don’t believe in miracles.” A month later, French sports daily newspaper L’Equipe publishes a front-page article headlined, “Le Mensonge Armstrong” or “The Armstrong Lie.” It reports that six Armstrong doping samples at the 1999 Tour de France showed the presence of the banned EPO.

Sept. 9, 2008: Announces comeback, the reason being “to launch an international cancer strategy,” in a video on his foundation’s website . In his 2013 doping confession, Armstrong says he regrets the comeback. “We wouldn’t be sitting here if I didn’t come back,” he tells Oprah Winfrey on primetime TV.

2009 Tour de France: Finishes third, 5:24 behind rival Astana teammate and Spanish winner Alberto Contador . “I can’t complain,” Armstrong said on Versus after the penultimate stage finishing atop Mont Ventoux. “For an old fart, coming in here, getting on the podium with these young guys, not so bad.” USADA later reported that scientific data showed Armstrong used EPO or blood transfusions during that Tour, which Armstrong denied in 2013 when admitting to doping earlier in his career.

2010 Tour de France: Finishes 23rd in his last Tour de France. Armstrong races after former teammate Floyd Landis admits to doping and accuses Armstrong and other former teammates of doping during the Tour de France wins. “At some point, people have to tell their kids that Santa Claus isn’t real,” Landis says in a “Nightline” interview that aired the final weekend of the Tour.

Feb. 16, 2011: Announces retirement, citing tiredness (in multiple respects) at age 39. “I can’t say I have any regrets. It’s been an excellent ride. I really thought I was going to win another Tour,” Armstrong said, according to The Associated Press. “Then I lined up like everybody else and wound up third.”

Aug. 24, 2012: USADA announces Armstrong is banned for life , and all of his results dating to Aug. 1, 1998, annulled, including all seven Tour de France titles. Armstrong chose not to contest the charges, which were first sent to him in a June letter, though he did not publicly admit to cheating. USADA releases details of the investigation in October. The International Cycling Union chooses not to contest USADA’s ruling, formally stripping him of the Tour de France titles. “Lance Armstrong has no place in cycling,” UCI President Pat McQuaid says. In November, a defiant Armstrong tweets an image of him lying on a couch in a room with seven framed Tour de France yellow jerseys on the walls.

Jan. 17, 2013: Admits to doping during all of his Tour de France victories in the Oprah confession that airs on primetime TV. “I viewed this situation as one big lie that I repeated a lot of times,” Armstrong says in a pre-recorded interview. “It’s just this mythic, perfect story, and it wasn’t true.” Armstrong said he did not view it as cheating while he was taking PEDs because others did, too. On the same day, the International Olympic Committee strips Armstrong of his 2000 Olympic bronze medal.

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Lance Armstrong

Who Is Lance Armstrong?

Lance Armstrong became a triathlete before turning to professional cycling. His career was halted by testicular cancer, but Armstrong returned to win a record seven consecutive Tour de France races beginning in 1999. Stripped of those titles in 2012 due to evidence of performance-enhancing drug use, Armstrong in 2013 admitted to doping throughout his cycling career, following years of denials.

Early Career

Born on September 18, 1971, in Plano, Texas, Armstrong was raised by his mother, Linda, in the suburbs of Dallas, Texas. Armstrong was athletic from an early age. He began running and swimming at 10 years old, and took up competitive cycling and triathlons at 13. At 16, Armstrong became a professional triathlete—he was the national sprint-course triathlon champion in 1989 and 1990.

Soon after, Armstrong chose to focus on cycling, his strongest event as well as his favorite. During his senior year of high school, the U.S. Olympic development team invited him to train in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Armstrong left high school temporarily to do so, but later took private classes and received his high school diploma in 1989.

The following summer, he qualified for the 1990 junior world team and placed 11th in the World Championship Road Race, with the best time of any American since 1976. That same year, he became the U.S. national amateur champion and beat out many professional cyclists to win two major races, the First Union Grand Prix and the Thrift Drug Classic.

International Cycling Star

In 1991, Armstrong competed in his first Tour DuPont, a long and difficult 12-stage race, covering 1,085 miles over 11 days. Though he finished in the middle of the pack, his performance announced a promising newcomer to the world of international cycling. He went on to win a stage at Italy's Settimana Bergamasca race later that summer.

After finishing second in the U.S. Olympic time trials in 1992, Armstrong was favored to win the road race in Barcelona, Spain. With a surprisingly sluggish performance, however, he came in only 14th. Undeterred, Armstrong turned professional immediately after the Olympics, joining the Motorola cycling team for a respectable yearly salary. Though he came in dead last in his first professional event, the day-long San Sebastian Classic in Spain, he rebounded in two weeks and finished second in a World Cup race in Zurich, Switzerland.

Armstrong had a strong year in 1993, winning cycling's "Triple Crown"—the Thrift Drug Classic, the Kmart West Virginia Classic and the CoreStates Race (the U.S. Professional Championship). That same year, he came in second at the Tour DuPont. He started off well in his first-ever Tour de France, a 21-stage race that is widely considered cycling's most prestigious event. Though he won the eighth stage of the race, he later fell to 62nd place and eventually pulled out.

In August 1993, the 21-year-old Armstrong won his most important race yet: the World Road Race Championship in Oslo, Norway, a one-day event covering 161 miles. As the leader of the Motorola team, he overcame difficult conditions—pouring rain made the roads slick and caused him to crash twice during the race—to become the youngest person and only the second American ever to win that contest.

The following year, he was again the runner-up at the Tour DuPont. Frustrated by his near miss, he trained with a vengeance for the next year's event and went on to finish two minutes ahead of rival Viatcheslav Ekimov of Russia for the win. At the Tour DuPont in 1996, he set several event records, including the largest margin of victory (three minutes, 15 seconds) and the fastest average speed in a time trial (32.9 miles per hour).

Also in 1996, Armstrong rode again for the Olympic team in Atlanta, Georgia. Looking uncharacteristically fatigued, he finished sixth in the time trials and 12th in the road race. Earlier that summer, he had been unable to finish the Tour de France, as he was sick with bronchitis. Despite such setbacks, Armstrong was still riding high by the fall of 1996. Then the seventh-ranked cyclist in the world, he signed a lucrative contract with a new team, France's Team Cofidis.

Battling Testicular Cancer

In October 1996, however, came the shocking announcement that Armstrong had been diagnosed with testicular cancer. Well advanced, the tumors had spread to his abdomen, lungs and lymph nodes. After having a testicle removed, drastically modifying his eating habits and beginning aggressive chemotherapy, Armstrong was given a 65 to 85 percent chance of survival. When doctors found tumors on his brain, however, his odds of survival dropped to 50-50, and then to 40 percent. Fortunately, a subsequent surgery to remove his brain tumors was declared successful, and after more rounds of chemotherapy, Armstrong was declared cancer-free in February 1997.

Throughout his terrifying struggle with the disease, Armstrong continued to maintain that he was going to race competitively again. No one else seemed to believe in him, however, and Cofidis pulled the plug on his contract and $600,000 annual salary. As a free agent, he had a good deal of trouble finding a sponsor, finally signing on to a $200,000-per-year position with the United States Postal Service team.

Tour de France Dominance

At the 1998 Tour of Luxembourg, his first international race since returning from cancer, Armstrong showed he was up for the challenge by winning the opening stage. A little over a year later, he capped his comeback in grand style by becoming the second American, after Greg LeMond, to win the Tour de France. He repeated that feat in July 2000 and followed with a bronze medal at the Summer Olympic Games.

Armstrong bolstered his legacy as his generation's dominant rider by handily winning the Tour in 2001 and 2002. However, notching a fifth victory, tying the record held by Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Indurain, proved his most difficult accomplishment. Stricken by illness before the start of the race, Armstrong fell at one point after snagging a spectator's bag, and barely avoided another crash by swerving across a field. He finished one minute and one second ahead of Germany's Jan Ullrich, the closest of his Tour triumphs.

Armstrong was back in top form to claim his record-breaking sixth Tour win in 2004. He won five individual stages, finishing a comfortable six minutes and 19 seconds ahead of Germany's Andreas Kloden. After capping his astounding run with a seventh consecutive Tour victory in 2005, he retired from racing.

Return to Competition

On September 9, 2008, Armstrong announced that he planned to return to competition and the Tour de France in 2009. A member of Team Astana, he placed third in the race, behind teammate Alberto Contador and Saxo Bank team member Andy Schleck.

After the race, Armstrong told reporters that he intended to compete again in 2010, with a new team endorsed by RadioShack. Slowed by multiple crashes, Armstrong finished 23rd overall in what would be his final Tour de France, and he announced he was retiring for good in February 2011.

Drug Controversy

Despite the inspiring narrative of Armstrong's triumph over cancer, not everyone was convinced it was valid. Irish sportswriter David Walsh, for one, became suspicious of Armstrong's behavior and sought to shed light on the rumors of drug use in the sport. In 2001, he wrote a story linking Armstrong to Italian doctor Michele Ferrari, who was being investigated for supplying performance enhancers to cyclists. Walsh later secured a confession from Armstrong's masseuse, Emma O'Reilly, and laid out his case against the American champion as co-writer of the 2004 book L.A. Confidential.

The plot thickened in 2010, when former U.S. Postal rider Floyd Landis, who had been stripped of his 2006 Tour de France win for drug use, admitted to doping and accused his celebrated teammate of doing the same. That prompted a federal investigation, and in June 2012 the U.S Anti-Doping Agency brought formal charges against Armstrong. The case heated up in July 2012, when some media outlets reported that five of Armstrong's former teammates, George Hincapie, Levi Leipheimer, David Zabriskie and Christian Vande Velde—all of whom participated in the 2012 Tour de France—were planning to testify against Armstrong.

The cycling champion vehemently denied using illegal drugs to boost his performance, and the 2012 USADA charges were no exception: He disparaged the new allegations, calling them "baseless." On August 23, 2012, Armstrong publicly announced that he was giving up his fight with the USADA's recent charges and that he had declined to enter arbitration with the agency because he was tired of dealing with the case, along with the stress the case created for his family.

"There comes a point in every man's life when he has to say, 'Enough is enough.' For me, that time is now," Armstrong said in an online statement around that time. "I have been dealing with claims that I cheated and had an unfair advantage in winning my seven Tours since 1999. The toll this has taken on my family and my work for our foundation and on me leads me to where I am today—finished with this nonsense."

Banned From Cycling

The following day, on August 24, 2012, the USADA announced that Armstrong would be stripped of his seven Tour titles—as well as other honors he received from 1999 to 2005—and banned from cycling for life. The agency concluded in its report that Armstrong had used banned performance-enhancing substances. On October 10, 2012, the USADA released its evidence against Armstrong, which included documents such as laboratory tests, emails and monetary payments. "The evidence shows beyond any doubt that the U.S. Postal Service Pro Cycling Team ran the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that the sport had ever seen," Travis Tygart, chief executive of the USADA, said in a statement.

The USADA evidence against Armstrong also contained testimony from 26 people. Several former members of Armstrong's cycling team were among those who claimed that Armstrong used performance-enhancing drugs and served as a type of a ringleader for the team's doping efforts. According to The New York Times , one teammate told the agency that "Lance called the shots on the team" and "what Lance said went."

Armstrong disputed the USADA's findings. His attorney, Tim Herman, called the USADA's case "a one-sided hatchet job" featuring "old, disproved, unreliable allegations based largely on axe-grinders, serial perjurers, coerced testimony, sweetheart deals and threat-induced stories," according to USA Today .

Shortly after the release of the USADA findings, the International Cycling Union (cycling's governing body) supported the USADA's decision and officially stripped Armstrong of his seven Tour de France victories. The union also banned Armstrong from the sport for life. ICU president Pat McQuaid said in a statement that "Lance Armstrong has no place in cycling."

Admission and Later Events

In January 2013, during a televised interview with Oprah Winfrey , Armstrong admitted to using performance-enhancing drugs throughout his career, beginning in the mid-1990s. During his interview with Winfrey, Armstrong stated that he took the hormones cortisone, testosterone and erythropoietin (also known as EPO), and conducted blood transfusions to boost his oxygen levels. "I am deeply flawed ... and I'm paying the price for it, and I think that's OK. I deserve this," Lance stated during the interview, adding that he took illegal drugs as a professional athlete due to a "ruthless desire to win ... the level that it went to, for whatever reason, is a flaw."

Of the interview, Winfrey said in a statement, "He did not come clean in the manner I expected. It was surprising to me. I would say that, for myself, my team, all of us in the room, we were mesmerized by some of his answers. I felt he was thorough. He was serious. He certainly prepared himself for this moment. I would say he met the moment. At the end of it, we both were pretty exhausted."

Around the same time that the interview was conducted, it was reported that the U.S. Department of Justice would join a lawsuit already in place against the cyclist, over his alleged fraud against the government. Armstrong's attempts to have the lawsuit dismissed were rejected, and in early 2017 the case was allowed to proceed to trial.

Fraud Settlement

In spring 2018, two weeks before his trial was scheduled to begin, Armstrong agreed to pay the U.S. Postal Service $5 million to settle their claims of being defrauded. According to his legal team, the settlement ended "all litigation against Armstrong related to his 2013 admission" of using performance-enhancing drugs.

"I am particularly glad to have made peace with the Postal Service," said Armstrong said in a statement. "While I believe that their lawsuit against me was without merit and unfair, I have since 2013 tried to take full responsibility for my mistakes, and make amends wherever possible. I rode my heart out for the Postal cycling team, and was always especially proud to wear the red, white and blue eagle on my chest when competing in the Tour de France."

Landis, the whistle-blower in the case, stood to receive $1.1 million of the amount paid to the government. Additionally, Armstrong agreed to shell out $1.65 million to cover his old teammate's legal expenses.

Movie and Documentaries

In 2015, the Armstrong biopic The Program , with Ben Foster portraying the fallen cyclist, premiered at the Toronto Film Festival. Armstrong had little to say about the film, other than criticizing its star for taking performance-enhancing drugs to prepare for the role.

Armstrong was far more receptive to the release of Icarus , a Netflix documentary in which amateur cyclist Bryan Fogel also pumps up on PEDs before uncovering a Russian state-sponsored system created to mask its athletes' use of such drugs. In late 2017, Armstrong tweeted: "After being asked roughly a 1000 times if I’ve seen @IcarusNetflix yet, I finally sat down to check it out. Holy hell. It’s hard to imagine that I could be blown away by much in that realm but I was. Incredible work @bryanfogel!"

It was subsequently announced that on January 6, 2018, the day after Academy Award voters could begin submitting their ballots, Armstrong would co-host a screening and reception for Icarus in New York.

The cyclist returned to the spotlight with the Marina Zenovich-directed documentary Lance , which premiered at the January 2020 Sundance Film Festival before airing on ESPN that May. Along with examining the formative influences that drove him to become such a ruthless competitor, the doc showcased Armstrong's attempts to adapt to public life in the years after he had fallen from his pedestal as one of the world's most admired athletes.

Charity, Personal Life and Children

Armstrong has lived in Austin, Texas, since 1990. In 1996, he founded the Lance Armstrong Foundation for Cancer, now called LiveStrong, and the Lance Armstrong Junior Race Series to help promote cycling and racing among America's youth. He is the author of two best-selling autobiographies, It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life (2000) and Every Second Counts (2003).

In 2006, Armstrong ran the New York City Marathon, raising $600,000 for his LiveStrong campaign. He stepped down from LiveStrong in October 2012 following the USADA report about his use of performance-enhancing drugs.

Armstrong married Kristin Richard, a public relations executive he met through his cancer foundation, in 1998. The couple had a son, Luke, in October 1999, using sperm frozen before Armstrong began chemotherapy. Twin daughters, Isabelle and Grace, were born in 2001. The couple filed for divorce in 2003. Afterward, he dated rocker Sheryl Crow , fashion designer Tory Burch and actresses Kate Hudson and Ashley Olsen .

In December 2008, Armstrong announced that his girlfriend, Anna Hansen, was pregnant with his child. The couple had been dating since July after meeting through Armstrong's charity work. The baby boy, Maxwell Edward, was born on June 4, 2009. A daughter, Olivia Marie, followed on October 18, 2010.

In July 2013, Armstrong made headlines again when it was reported that he would be competing in The Des Moines Register 's Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa, a statewide cycling race sponsored by the newspaper.

"I'm well aware my presence is not an easy topic, and so I encourage people if they want to give a high-five, great," Armstrong stated shortly after the news broke, according to the Daily Mail . "If you want to shoot me the bird, that's OK too. I'm a big boy, and so I made the bed, I get to sleep in it."

In 2015, Armstrong returned to the Tour de France course to ride in a leukemia charity event one day before the start of the race.

QUICK FACTS

• Name: Lance Armstrong
• Birth Year: 1971
• Birth date: September 18, 1971
• Birth State: Texas
• Birth City: Plano
• Birth Country: United States
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: Lance Armstrong is a cancer survivor and former professional cyclist who was stripped of his seven Tour de France wins due to evidence of performance-enhancing drug use.
• Astrological Sign: Virgo

We strive for accuracy and fairness.If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us !

CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: Lance Armstrong Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/athletes/lance-armstrong
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: April 23, 2021
• Original Published Date: April 2, 2014
• There comes a point in every man's life when he has to say, 'Enough is enough.' For me, that time is now.
• My ruthless desire to win at all costs served me well on the bike but the level it went to, for whatever reason, is a flaw. That desire, that attitude, that arrogance.
• The biggest challenge of the rest of my life is to not slip up again and not lose sight of what I have to do. I had it but things got too big and too crazy.
• If you're trying to hide something, you wouldn't keep getting away with it for 10 years. Nobody is that clever.
• I know the truth. The truth isn't what was out there. The truth isn't what I said, and now it's gone—this story was so perfect for so long.
• There was more happiness in the process, in the build, in the preparation. The winning was almost phoned in.
• If you're asking me if I want to compete again, the answer is hell yes, I'm a competitor.
• I learned a lesson that day. No more gifts."[On giving Marco Pantani a stage win in the 2000 Tour de France]
• The Look was just one part of a great battle with the Telekom team all day.
• Nobody believed I was able to do that after the crash. But I was a desperate man, and I knew that was my last chance to win the Tour de France.
• I'm well aware my presence is not an easy topic, and so I encourage people if they want to give a high-five, great. If you want to shoot me the bird, that's OK too. I'm a big boy, and so I made the bed, I get to sleep in it.
• I am deeply flawed ... and I'm paying the price for it, and I think that's okay. I deserve this."[On being stripped of his seven Tour de France titles for doping as a pro cyclist.]
• Two things scare me: The first is getting hurt. But that's not nearly as scary as the second, which is losing.
• Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever.

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Crazy Stat Shows Just How Common Doping Was In Cycling When Lance Armstrong Was Winning The Tour de France

Even after Lance Armstrong finally came clean and was banned from cycling for life, many still defend the (unofficial) 7-time Tour de France champion.

The biggest argument for Armstrong is the belief that all riders were doping.

We have known for a while now that a lot of cyclists were doping. A recent breakdown of the extent of the "EPO Era" (named for the most common drug, Erythropoietin) shows the "everybody was doing it" defense may not be that far off.

Teddy Cutler of SportingIntelligence.com recently took a an excellent and detailed look at all the top cyclists from 1998 through 2013 and whether or not they have ever been linked to blood doping or have links to doping or a doctor linked to blood doping.

During this 16-year period, 12 Tour de France races were won by cyclists who were confirmed dopers. In addition, of the 81 different riders who finished in the top-10 of the Tour de France during this period, 65% have been caught doping, admitted to blood doping, or have strong associations to doping and are suspected cheaters.

More importantly for Lance Armstrong, during the 7-year window when he won every Tour de France (1999-2005), 87% of the top-10 finishers (61 of 70) were confirmed dopers or suspected of doping.

Of those, 48 (69%) were confirmed, with 39 having been suspended at some point in their career.

None of that excuses Armstrong's behavior, especially outside of the races . But it is clear Armstrong wasn't alone. He was just better at it than anybody else.

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Lance Armstrong stripped of Tour de France medals

October 22, 2012 / 10:22 AM EDT / AP

Last Updated 10:22 a.m. ET

GENEVA American cyclist Lance Armstrong was stripped of his seven Tour de France titles and banned for life by cycling's governing body Monday following a report from the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency that accused him of leading a massive doping program on his teams.

Cycling's governing body agreed Monday to stripping Armstrong of his Tour de France titles, following a report from the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency that accused him of leading a massive doping program on his teams.

UCI President Pat McQuaid announced that the federation accepted the USADA's report on Armstrong and would not appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

The decision cleared the way for Tour de France organizers to officially remove Armstrong's name from the record books, erasing his consecutive victories from 1999-2005.

In Paris, Tour director Christian Prudhomme said at a news conference he no longer considers Armstrong the seven-time champion of the race. Prudhomme called UCI's decision "totally logical" and said "Lance Armstrong is no longer the winner of the Tour de France from 1999-2005."

Prudhomme has said the race would go along with whatever cycling's governing body decided, and will have no official winners for those years.

USADA said Armstrong should be banned and stripped of his Tour titles for "the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen" within his U.S. Postal Service and Discovery Channel teams.

The USADA report said Armstrong and his teams used steroids, the blood booster EPO and blood transfusions. The report included statements from 11 former teammates who testified against Armstrong.

Armstrong denies doping, saying he passed hundreds of drug tests. But he chose not to fight USADA in one of the agency's arbitration hearings, arguing the process was biased against him. Former Armstrong team director Johan Bruyneel is also facing doping charges, but he is challenging the USADA case in arbitration.

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On Sunday, Armstrong greeted about 4,300 cyclists at his Livestrong charity's fundraiser bike ride in Texas, telling the crowd he's faced a "very difficult" few weeks.

"I've been better, but I've also been worse," Armstrong, a cancer survivor, told the crowd.

While drug use allegations have followed the 41-year-old Armstrong throughout much of his career, the USADA report has badly damaged his reputation. Longtime sponsors Nike, Trek Bicycles and Anheuser-Busch have dropped him, as have other companies, and Armstrong also stepped down last week as chairman of Livestrong, the cancer awareness charity he founded 15 years ago after surviving testicular cancer which spread to his lungs and brain.

Armstrong's astonishing return from life-threatening illness to the summit of cycling offered an inspirational story that transcended the sport. However, his downfall has ended "one of the most sordid chapters in sports history," USADA said in its 200-page report published two weeks ago.

Armstrong has consistently argued that the USADA system was rigged against him, calling the agency's effort a "witch hunt."

If Armstrong's Tour victories are not reassigned there would be a hole in the record books, marking a shift from how organizers treated similar cases in the past.

When Alberto Contador was stripped of his 2010 Tour victory for a doping violation, organizers awarded the title to Andy Schleck. In 2006, Oscar Pereiro was awarded the victory after the doping disqualification of American rider Floyd Landis.

USADA also thinks the Tour titles should not be given to other riders who finished on the podium, such was the level of doping during Armstrong's era.

The agency said 20 of the 21 riders on the podium in the Tour from 1999 through 2005 have been "directly tied to likely doping through admissions, sanctions, public investigations" or other means. It added that of the 45 riders on the podium between 1996 and 2010, 36 were by cyclists "similarly tainted by doping."

The world's most famous cyclist could still face further sports sanctions and legal challenges. Armstrong could lose his 2000 Olympic time-trial bronze medal and may be targeted with civil lawsuits from ex-sponsors or even the U.S. government.

In total, 26 people — including 15 riders — testified that Armstrong and his teams used and trafficked banned substances and routinely used blood transfusions. Among the witnesses were loyal sidekick George Hincapie and convicted dopers Tyler Hamilton and Floyd Landis.

USADA's case also implicated Italian sports doctor Michele Ferrari, depicted as the architect of doping programs, and longtime coach and team manager Bruyneel.

Ferrari — who has been targeted in an Italian prosecutor's probe — and another medical official, Dr. Luis Garcia del Moral, received lifetime bans.

Bruyneel, team doctor Pedro Celaya and trainer Jose "Pepe" Marti opted to take their cases to arbitration with USADA. The agency could call Armstrong as a witness at those hearings.

Bruyneel, a Belgian former Tour de France rider, lost his job last week as manager of the RadioShack-Nissan Trek team which Armstrong helped found to ride for in the 2010 season.

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Armstrong, Other Riders Doped, Author Says

Champion bike racer Lance Armstrong used performance enhancing drugs to win his record seven consecutive Tour de France victories, according to a new book.

David Walsh, a sports journalist and author of From Lance to Landis: Inside the American Doping Controversy at the Tour de France , talks with Steve Inskeep.

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Dark Turn in the Tale of a First Title

By Jeré Longman

• Oct. 10, 2012

Just before the 1999 Tour de France, a teammate pointed out that Lance Armstrong had a bruise on his upper arm caused by a syringe.

According to a doping investigation, Armstrong cursed and said, “That’s not good.”

A public weigh-in of the riders was to be attended by the news media. A team masseuse found some makeup, and Armstrong’s bruise, and the doping that investigators assert caused it, was ultimately concealed.

The 1999 Tour was supposed to be one of renewal after a doping scandal engulfed the 1998 race. Instead, Armstrong won his first of his seven Tours by using the prohibited blood-boosting agent EPO and the steroid hormone testosterone, according to a 200-page report released Wednesday by the United States Anti-Doping Agency.

While Armstrong has long protested his innocence, retroactive testing found EPO in six of Armstrong’s urine samples from the 1999 race, according to the report. In addition, the report said, five fellow riders on Armstrong’s 1999 United States Postal Service team — George Hincapie, Frankie Andreu, Tyler Hamilton, Jonathan Vaughters and Christian Vande Velde — provided affidavits testifying to firsthand knowledge that Armstrong violated antidoping rules, the report said.

The evidence that Armstrong used EPO in the 1999 race was overwhelming, the report said, adding, “No other conclusion is even plausible.”

The tale behind Armstrong’s first Tour triumph, an achievement that made him an instant celebrity, is laid out in the investigative report in almost novelistic fashion. It involves a man on a motorcycle who delivered drugs to Armstrong’s team, an Italian doctor who was famous for helping riders dope, a training regimen designed to avoid drug testing, and the active complicity of the team masseuse.

The 1999 racing season began, the report said, with an unlikely goal for Armstrong, a cancer survivor: to win the Tour de France. He would skip many of the buildup races to concentrate on his sport’s major event. And for fuel, the report said, he would rely on banned substances.

A new team director, Johan Bruyneel, and team doctor, Luis Garcia del Moral, were hired that year for the Postal Service team. Armstrong called the team the Bad News Bears. He wanted a new team, according to the affidavit by Vaughters, his teammate, because the outgoing doctor, Pedro Celaya, “had not been aggressive enough for Armstrong in providing banned products.”

Bruyneel and del Moral, on the other hand, had formerly been associated with a racing team widely known, the report said, for “its organized team doping.”

Cyclists who wanted to dope had two main advantages in 1999, the report noted. Cycling’s international governing body had no organized out-of-competition drug testing program — considered the only effective way to catch those using banned substances. The governing body also did not require riders to make their whereabouts known during training so that they could be screened.

Much of Armstrong’s pre-Tour training in 1999 was spent along remote mountain roads of the Alps and the Pyrenees. Two teammates — Hamilton and Kevin Livingston — assisted him with arduous climbing, the report said. A regular attendee at these training camps, the report said, was an Italian sports doctor named Michele Ferrari, who would later be accused by American doping officials of trafficking in banned substances.

Hamilton was first injected with EPO in 1999 by Ferrari during training at Sestriere, an Italian ski village that would be a mountaintop finish during the Tour, the report said. Andreu said in an affidavit that he received EPO injections at races that year from del Moral, the Postal Service team doctor.

Pepe Marti, the Postal Service team trainer, also provided EPO to riders in 1999, the report said. At a late dinner in Nice, France, Betsy Andreu, Frankie’s wife, said that Marti arrived to provide what she was told was EPO to Armstrong. The dinner was held late, she said, because Marti was traveling from Spain and considered it “safer to cross the border at night.”

Armstrong took a brown paper bag from Marti, held it up and, according to Andreu, called it “liquid gold.”

In May 1999, Emma O’Reilly, the team masseuse, made an 18-hour round-trip drive from Nice to Spain to deliver a bottle of pills to Armstrong that, according to the report, “she understood to be banned drugs.”

That same month, Hamilton was at Armstrong’s villa in Nice, and received a vial of EPO from Armstrong that had been stored in Armstrong’s refrigerator, the report said.

On June 10, 1999, less than a month before the Tour began, Armstrong’s hematocrit level — the percentage by volume of oxygen-carrying red blood cells in whole blood — hovered at 41 percent, below the allowable race limit of 50 percent, the report said.

When O’Reilly, the masseuse, asked Armstrong how he would optimize his performance, the report said that he responded, “What everybody does.” O’Reilly understood this to mean Armstrong would use EPO, the report said.

The Tour de France opened July 3, 1999, and ran through July 25. Armstrong won the prologue, but a few days later, he received notice of a positive test for a corticosteroid, a chemical that helps regulate inflammation, metabolism and electrolyte levels.

Because Armstrong did not have medical authorization to use corticosteroids, the report said, a story was fabricated to backdate a prescription for cortisone cream and claim that the medication had been prescribed to treat a saddle sore, the report said.

According to the report, Armstrong told O’Reilly, the masseuse, “Now, Emma, you know enough to bring me down.”

During the first two weeks of the Tour, Armstrong, Hamilton and Livingston used EPO every third or fourth day in their camper or hotel rooms, the report said. Armstrong, Hamilton and Livingston traveled in a newer, bigger camper during that Tour, while other Postal Service riders shoehorned into a smaller, older vehicle. Hamilton and Livingston also shared a hotel room so they could speak openly with Armstrong about doping, the report said.

The three riders would “inject quickly and then put the syringes in a bag or Coke can and Dr. del Moral would get the syringe out of the camper as quickly as possible,” the report said.

Because security was tight, the EPO was smuggled to the Postal Service team by a personal assistant and handyman for Armstrong, the report said. He was a motorcycle enthusiast who followed the Tour on his motorcycle, and the riders who knew his purpose gave him the nickname Motoman.

Armstrong also used testosterone, which builds muscle and aids recovery from exertion, during the 1999 Tour, the report said. He mixed it with olive oil in a concoction that was taken orally. After one stage, the report said, Armstrong squirted the “oil” in Hamilton’s mouth.

After relinquishing the yellow jersey, Armstrong reclaimed first place in a time trial, then rode to a dominant mountaintop finish in Sestriere, the Italian ski village. He was not then known as a great climber, and Christophe Bassons, a French rider, noted in a newspaper column that the peloton had been “shocked” by Armstrong’s ride up to Sestriere.

At the race’s end, however, Armstrong proclaimed his innocence. He won the Tour six more times.

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This Day In History : July 24

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Lance Armstrong wins seventh Tour de France

On July 24, 2005, American cyclist Lance Armstrong wins a record-setting seventh consecutive Tour de France and retires from the sport. After Armstrong survived testicular cancer, his rise to cycling greatness inspired cancer patients and fans around the world and significantly boosted his sport’s popularity in the United States. However, in 2012, in a dramatic fall from grace, the onetime global cycling icon was stripped of his seven Tour titles after being charged with the systematic use of performance-enhancing drugs.

Born on September 18, 1971, in Plano, Texas , Armstrong started his sports career as a triathlete, competing professionally by the time he was 16. Biking proved to be his strongest event, and at age 17 he was invited to train with the U.S. Olympic cycling developmental team in Colorado . He won the U.S. amateur cycling championship two years later, in 1991, then finished 14th in the road race competition at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, Spain. He turned pro later that year but finished last in the Classico San Sebastian, his first race as a professional. In 1993 he bounced back to win 10 titles, including his first major race, the World Road Championships. That same year, he also competed in his first Tour de France, the grueling three-week race that attracts the world’s top cyclists, and won the eighth stage. In 1995 he again won a stage of the Tour de France, as well as the Tour DuPont, a major U.S. cycling event.

Armstrong began 1996 as the number-one-ranked cyclist in the world, but he chose not to race the Tour de France and performed poorly at that year’s Olympics. After experiencing intense pain during a training ride, he was diagnosed in October 1996 with Stage 3 testicular cancer, which had spread to his lungs and brain. He underwent surgery and chemotherapy, then began training again in early 1997. Later that year, he signed with the U.S. Postal Service team. After he quit in the middle of one of his first races back, many thought his career was over. However, after taking some time off from competition, Armstrong came back to finish in the top five at both the Tour of Spain and the World Championships in 1998.

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In 1999, to the amazement of the cycling community, Armstrong won his first-ever Tour de France and went on to win the race for the next six consecutive years. In addition to his seven overall wins (a record for both total and consecutive wins), he won 22 individual stages and 11 individual time trials, and led his team to victories in three team time trials between 1999 and 2005. After retiring in 2005, Armstrong made a comeback to pro cycling in 2009, finishing third in that year’s Tour and 23rd in the 2010 Tour. He retired for good from the sport in 2011 at age 39.

Over the years, Armstrong’s intense training regimen and his famed dominance in the difficult and treacherous mountain stages of the Tour de France inspired awe among both fans and opponents. His cycling cadence, which averaged 95 to 100 rotations per minute (rpm) but reached as high as 120 rpm, was considered remarkable, particularly during climbs. In addition to being an exceptionally talented climber, Armstrong performed extremely well in time trials.

Throughout his career, Armstrong, like many other top cyclists of his era, was dogged by accusations of performance-boosting drug use, but he repeatedly and vigorously denied all allegations against him and claimed to have passed hundreds of drug tests. In June 2012 the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), following a two-year investigation, charged the cycling superstar with engaging in doping violations from at least August 1998, and with participating in a conspiracy to cover up his misconduct. After losing a federal appeal to have the USADA charges against him dropped, Armstrong, while continuing to maintain he had done nothing wrong, announced on August 23 that he would stop fighting the charges. The next day, USADA banned Armstrong for life from competitive cycling and disqualified all his competitive results from August 1, 1998, through the present.

On October 10, 2012, USADA released hundreds of pages of evidence, including sworn testimony from 11 of Armstrong’s former teammates, that the agency said demonstrated Armstrong and the U.S. Postal Service team had been involved in the most sophisticated and successful doping program in the history of cycling. A week after the USADA report was made public, Armstrong stepped down as chairman of his Livestrong cancer awareness foundation, and also was fired from many of his endorsement deals. On October 22, Union Cycliste Internationale, the cycling’s world governing body, announced that it accepted the findings of the USADA investigation and officially was erasing Armstrong’s name from the Tour de France record books and upholding his lifetime ban from the sport.

After years of denials, Armstrong finally admitted publicly, in a televised interview with Oprah Winfrey that aired on January 17, 2013, he had doped for much of his cycling career, beginning in the mid-1990s through his Tour de France victory in 2005. He admitted to using a performance-enhancing drug regimen that included testosterone, human growth hormone, the blood booster EPO and cortisone.

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The Tour de France's first doping scandal, 100 years on

By Simon Smale

Topic: Road Cycle Racing

Henri Pélissier was celebrated after winning the Tour de France in 1923. ( Getty Images: Roger Viollet )

The Tour de France is a race that has always been intrinsically linked with its past.

The race drips with its own sense of self, with its history dictating everything from its route to its idiosyncratic quirks.

This year's 111th edition is no different.

For the first time since 1903, Paris will play no role in the route, a by-product of the imminent Olympic Games.

That wasn't an issue in 1924, incidentally, when the Grande Arrivée into the Parc des Princes velodrome in Paris clashed with the final day of the swimming, tennis and boxing, and came slap-bang in the middle of the gymnastics.

But times change and now, a century on, the sporting and cultural behemoth that is the Olympic Games takes precedent.

So, the Tour was forced to change things up — and looked no further than into its extensive back-catalogue for alternative inspiration.

They settled on honouring the Tour's first Italian champion, Ottavio Bottecchia, with a Grand Départ in Florence, Italy for the first time.

Ottavio Bottecchia won the first of his two Tours de France in 1924, but was dead three years later. ( Getty Images )

The race will have three stages in Italy before the race crosses into southern France .

That 1924 victory was the first of two consecutive Tours de France wins Bottecchia achieved before his mysterious death in 1927 — but that's another story.

Bottecchia was, by all accounts, the strongest in the race, but his passage towards victory was no doubt aided, in part, by the acrimonious exit of defending champion Henri Pélissier, to whom Bottecchia finished second in 1923.

Pélissier was one of the great French cyclists either side of World War I, winning a total of 10 Tour d France stages, split before and after the conflict as well as claiming victories in Milan-San Remo, Paris-Brussels, Bordeaux-Paris and Paris-Tours.

He also won Paris–Roubaix twice and the Tour of Lombardy three times to round off an impressive and imposing resume.

Aside from being a terrific rider, the cantankerous Parisian was also a firm believer in getting a fair go for his fellow riders.

He frequently butted heads with Tour de France founder, Henri Desgrange over the spartan conditions the race director imposed on the competitors, both on the Tour and at other races throughout the calendar.

The 'calvary' of early Tours de France

Henri Desgrange founded newspaper, l'Auto, which evolved into current publication, l'Equipe, and created the Tour de France in 1903 to help circulation. ( Getty Images: Albert Harlingue/Roger Viollet )

Tours de France have always been extreme tests of endurance.

This year's race covers 3,499.2km with almost 53,000m of elevation gain.

Overall, riders will expect to be racing for a total of 80 or so hours over the course of the three-week, 21-stage race.

That's nothing compared to 1924, though.

A century ago, riders completed a whopping 5,425km shared across just 15 stages — Pélissier complained later that the race was like "a calvary," only the way to the cross only had 14 stations — the Tour had 15.

"You have no idea what the Tour de France is," he added, speaking to French journalist Albert Londres, whose reports in le Petit Parisien newspaper created a sensation when they were published.

The shortest of those 15 stages was a mountainous 275km from Nice to Briançon in the Alps — 44km longer than the lengthiest stage on this year's route. The longest was a barely conceivable 482km from Les Sables-d'Olonne to Bayonne which took 19 hours and 40 minutes to complete.

Bottecchia's total winning time was a shade over 222 hours, or just over nine days in the saddle.

Ottavio Bottecchia (second in this picture) won his second Tour de France in 1925. ( Getty Images: Topical Press Agency )

But it wasn't just the distances.

A stickler for observing archaic and antagonistic rules, Desgrange demanded that every rider finished with the same equipment that they started each stage with.

That meant any punctured tyres needed to be carried with them and any extra jackets or jumpers that were being worn at the start of the stage — which often started in the cold, early hours of the morning before sunrise, before riding through the heat of a French summer's day — had to be worn at the finish.

"We don't only have to work like donkeys, we have to freeze or suffocate as well," Pélissier said.

"Apparently that's an important part of the sport."

After an instance where Pélissier was docked time for losing one of his jerseys, he said he went to find Desgrange, who told him that he could not throw away anything provided by the race organisers. 

Pélissier's argument that the race had not provided him the jerseys — Pélissier, unlike other riders, had arranged his own sponsorship — adding that he would quit the race in protest.

He eventually did so, taking his brother Francis and another rider, Maurice Ville with him.

It was on that day that he ran into Londres in a cafe next to the station in the small Normandy village of Coutances.

Les Forçats de la Route

Albert Londres is one of the great French investigative reporters of the early 20th century. ( Getty Images: Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone )

Over a bowl of chocolate, the subsequent interview blew the lid off some of the more unsavoury aspects of the Tour that has cast a lengthy shadow over the entire sport ever since.

In that cafe, the two Pélissier brothers and Ville outlined what exactly the riders had to consume to get through those monstrous stages.

Spoiler alert, it wasn't bowls of chocolate.

"Do you want to see how we walk?" writes Londres, describing Henri Pélissier taking a vial out of his bag.

"This is the cocaine for the eyes, this is the chloroform for the gums," Henri Pélissier said.

Ville now emptied his bag on the table, revealing an ointment that "warms the knees".

All three riders then revealed the three boxes of pills they had with them.

It was Francis Pélissier that said the most explosive line.

"In short, we ride on dynamite," he said.

The story of that Tour de France was immortalised in Londres' reporting, a book which he titled: Les Forçats de la Route, the convicts of the road, in which he also revealed that the riders said that, instead of sleeping, they danced a jig in their rooms at night and suffered with "draining" diarrhoea. 

All three backtracked from the comments, suggesting they were overplaying things for a man in Londres who was not a cycling journalist per se — his typical beat was foreign affairs and the exposing of the horrors of colonialism. 

Henri Pélissier detailed the cocktail of drugs that got him through the Tour de France. ( Getty Images: Branger/Roger Viollet )

But even accounting for that, there were no repercussions from the startling admissions revealed in the book.

Why? Well, what the Pélissier's and Ville admitted to was far from against the rules.

In fact, French law only prohibited the use of stimulants in sport in 1965, over 40 years later.

In part, that was a reaction to the death of 24-year-old Danish rider Knud Enemark Jensen, who collapsed during a time trial at the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome.

Despite the ban on stimulants, doping cases in the Tour have followed with alarming regularity.

Whether it was Tom Simpson's horrendous drug-addled death on the slopes of Mont Ventoux in 1967, right through to the seismic Festina affair of 1998 and then the subsequent seven lost Lance Armstrong years.

The most recent case that directly impacted the Tour featured Nairo Quintana and his Arkéa-Samsic squad .

Quintana was disqualified from his sixth place finish in 2022 after testing positive for Tramadol — a substance banned by the UCI but not on the WADA list.

And still it continues.

Just this week, Italian rider Andrea Piccolo was sacked by EF Education-EasyPost Pro Cycling after the 23-year-old was stopped by Italian authorities on suspicion of transporting human growth hormone into Italy.

Piccolo was not scheduled to race the Tour, but did compete in the Giro d'Italia earlier this year.

Drugs have been a part of the Tour de France for over a century, leaving every subsequent winner to face questions over the legitimacy of their triumphs, even if the optimist hopes that sports science and the extraordinary levels of scrutiny placed upon the leading riders today means what we've seen is fully legal.

The ABC of SPORT

If pro cycling is now clean, why do records set by dopers keep on getting broken?

Pro cyclists keep getting faster decade after decade. Can improvements in training and tech take all the credit? Joe Laverick compares past and present

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Under the microscope

Data driven, old hand, modern peloton, raised pace raises eyebrows, setting new boundaries, has cycling cleaned up its act.

When Jonas Vingegaard crossed the finish line on the Champs-Elysées this summer, he didn’t just take his first ever yellow jersey. He also took the crown for the fastest ever Tour de France. The 25-year old Dane had pedalled his way around France at an average speed of 42.03kph (26.1mph) – beating the record of that guy from Texas. How is it possible that the supposed clean generation are smashing records from the sport’s darkest era? 

One side of the argument points to the countless developments of recent years, from aerodynamics to nutrition, training to recovery, hydration to heat control – all of which have made the peloton faster. Following the lead of Team Sky’s marginal gains approach, cycling shifted from settling for “it’s always been done that way” to questioning “why don’t we do it another way instead?” – from training guided by old wives’ tales to performance honed by science from F1 race teams. 

The 2022 Tour de France was one of the hottest on record, but that didn’t stop the riders smashing records out of the park. While it is difficult to compare performances across the years, given that each Tour has differing parcours, looking at the outright records overall and on known segments still offers a decent level of comparison. Not only did we witness the fastest ever Tour de France from a GC perspective but the fall of some mythical climbing records too. 

Stage 17 of the 2022 Tour de France saw UAE’s Brandon McNulty riding at approximately 6.58W/kg to break Marco Pantani’s 25-year-old record on the Col d’Azet by two and a half minutes. We saw the fastest Alpe d’Huez ascent since 2006, despite the leaders being two minutes down on Pantani’s 1995 record. On top of all that, on stage six to Longwy, the front-runners averaged 49.4kph, making it the fourth fastest road stage ever, and the fastest ever with more than 2,000m of climbing. 

With records falling on all terrains, it’s impossible not to wonder how and why. There are of course variables such as temperature and wind – bear in mind Geraint Thomas ’s response when asked why this year’s Tour was so fast: “We’ve had a fair bit of tailwind, to be fair.” Maybe we’re witnessing incremental progress plus natural variations in weather. Then again, we can’t ignore that in the 1990s and early 2000s the peloton was riddled with performance-enhancing drugs. Is it really credible that today’s riders are beating the times of yesterday’s dopers without some secret ingredients of their own? 

Over the past two decades, cycling has been placed under a microscope and developed in every way imaginable. There is no doubt that equipment has gone through revolutionary developments, meaning riders go faster without expending more energy. From clothing to bike design to tyre composition to helmet choice, teams with enough cash are buying into improvements that have cost millions in R&D. As for the poorer teams, they have to make do with older, cheaper tech. 

“I think the culture in the UK has led the way in aerodynamic development over the past 15 years,” says Matt Bottrill, a former national 10-mile TT champion who works as an aero consultant for Lotto-Soudal . “It’s a lot easier to read data these days, which makes it easier to understand how to get faster.” 

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Aside from aerodynamics, which tech improvements have made the biggest difference? “Tires are one of the craziest developments,” says Bottrill. “If I’d had today’s wheel and tire technology in the National 10 that I won [in 2014], I’d have been 30-40 seconds faster – and I won that race with a 17:40.” He explains how wider, tubeless tires run at lower pressures have proved to be a significant breakthrough. On the road bike side, Trek recently announced that its new Madone was 20W faster than the previous edition , let alone a pre-2010 edition.

An industry insider noted: “Early aero bikes handled poorly, but we don’t see that now. A surprising amount of the aerodynamic gains comes from the handlebars.” Some teams are studying the relationship between biomechanics and aerodynamics – how changes in position alter power and drag , to find the best compromise. For example, if dropping your saddle gains you more in aero enhancement than you lose in watts at the pedals, it’s worth doing. More and more, this involves the use of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) which allows teams to validate theories without hands-on testing in a wind tunnel or out in the field. 

It’s not just equipment that has changed but training too. Frank Overton is the owner of FasCat Coaching and has coached pro athletes for over 20 years. The US coach believes that development of technology and cycling’s ever increasing professionalism holds the answer to why athletes are getting faster. “Physiologically we’re all human beings and we still improve in the same way; it’s the training methodologies and the use of data that has changed. In the past 10 years we’ve seen the mass adoption of power-based training.” Overton believes that the near-universal uptake of power meters between 2002 and 2012 effected a step change in training precision. “Once coaches began to quantify training load and collect race data, there was a greater understanding of racing’s demands, reflected in the sessions prescribed.” 

Fifteen years ago Tyler Hamilton was getting laughed at for doing intervals. There was no structure back then, it was just the old-school methodology of 25-30 hours per week, and then using racing for the intensity,” says the former WorldTour star. “Now, everyone has highly structured and highly-personalised training plans. That increased specificity alone has led to improvements in Tour de France riders.” 

The use of the best power meters is just one form of technological progress in cycling. Overton points to mass data collection as another big advance in training intelligence. “Ten years ago each team would have one coach. For example, at Liquigas, all the riders would get the training schedule individualised for Peter Sagan. Now, every rider has their own made-to-measure plan.” How would Overton slice the progress pie in terms of importance? “The reason the peloton has got faster is 70% power-based training, 15% bike technology and 15% cycling nutrition .” 

Bahrain-Victorious’s Heinrich Haussler has seen it all: the 38-year-old has had first-hand experience of the past 18 years of progress, having turned pro in 2004. Why does he think the peloton is getting faster? “The sport is more developed than ever before,” he tells me. “There’s more resources, better training techniques and nutrition. The bike is getting more aerodynamic and lighter, and tires are getting faster.” 

To anyone living a normal life outside of the pro ranks, the level of monitoring might seem excessive, possibly even intrusive. “These days, everything is completely controlled,” admits Haussler. “At home, I get on the scales every day and then it’s uploaded for someone to see. At a race, the weighing continues and a nutritionist helps make sure you have the exact quantities of carbs and protein you need .” For a pro at the top level, your schedule is never your own. “The number of training camps we do now is crazy,” continues Haussler. “We’re constantly away from home. These days it’s impossible to be competitive at a big race without having trained at altitude first.”

Before this year, the record for the fastest ever Tour de France belonged to Lance Armstrong for his victory in 2005 (since voided). The Texan averaged 41.65kph, while Vingegaard’s new record stands at 42.03kph. Looking at these figures and all of the other records that have been broken, it’s easy to see why this year’s Tour prompted some raised eyebrows. 

The only WorldTour rider sanctioned for doping in the past two years was Nairo Quintana, disqualified from his sixth place at the Tour de France after testing positive for Tramado l. The trend would seem to be towards cleaner racing, with far fewer cases of doping compared to the early-2000s. Then again, to indulge in a more pessimistic view, it took a decade for Lance Armstrong’s house of cards to come crashing down. 

Asked about doping at this year’s Tour de France, Wout van Aert responded: “We have to pass controls every moment of the year, not only at the Tour de France, also at our homes.” 

Of course that’s true, but perhaps he should have been more aware of how such stock phrases can be heard as echoing Armstrong’s empty mantra, “I’ve never failed a test.” Looking back at cycling’s history, it is rare that dopers are caught red-handed. The big scandals – Festina Affair, Operación Puerto, Lance Armstrong and Operation Aderlass – were all exposed by police investigations or whistle-blowers, not anti-doping violations. Just this spring, raids on Portugal’s premier team W52-FC Porto saw 10 riders eventually banned, including last year’s Volta ao Algarve winner João Rodrigues. There is a fine line between hope and belief. It is impossible to know what is going on behind the scenes, and previous generations have shown that riders are often one step ahead of the testers. I for one hope the pro peloton is clean, for everyone’s sake.

It is rare that sport stands still. What once seemed impossible is now possible, as attested by countless examples through history: four minute mile, two hour marathon, or riding the Tour de France at 42kph. Each incremental technological advancement is a small step towards faster performances. 

Amateurs simply cannot be expected to do what pros can, but there are many areas where copycatting the best has its benefits. Using modern training technology and data to inform training will make you a better athlete, just as riding a more aerodynamic bike will make you faster. “Amateurs don’t have the time available to recover like the pros can,” Overton reminds us, “but the trickle down technology can help – in fact, it was amateurs who led the way on power- based training first, adopting it before the pros!” It’s a tale as old as time. Every era thinks it’s at the peak of human and technological advancement and then someone or something comes along and redefines what’s possible – we look back and laugh at our naivety. For cycling, the past decade has seen a huge shift, and the sport is barely recognisable from 10-20 years ago. 

So, is it believable that today’s generation are, through legal advancements only, smashing records from the sport’s darkest days? Yes, no, maybe. We’d be stupid to ignore the leaps and bounds in progress over the past 10-20 years, which, though difficult to accurately quantify, benefit the modern day racer to the tune of at least 20W in aero gains alone. Mix in the developments in training science and it’s reasonable to believe that today’s top guns are going faster by honest means. Yet we’ve been burnt by giving the benefit of the doubt too many times before.

"No" – Robin Parisotto 

“I’m not optimistic that much has changed” A stem cell researcher and antidoping advocate, Parisotto helped to develop the early EPO tests and was one of the founding members of the UCI’s biological passport programme. He played a key part in the 2015 Sunday Times investigation against the IAAF concluding that hundreds of athletes had recorded suspicious results which were not followed up between 2001 and 2012. 

“I’m not optimistic that much has changed regarding doping in sport. At best, the status quo has been maintained since the blood passport was introduced in 2008-9. My view on sport is quite jaundiced, and I make no apologies for that. I also fear that there has been a complete drop-off in all anti-doping programmes since the Covid outbreak. 

“The resources that anti-doping programmes have are tiny in comparison to [the budgets behind] athletes and teams, so they will always face an uphill battle. I think most athletes who are blood doping are still using the old tried-andtested methods. To the best of my knowledge, there aren’t any new substances; if there are, they certainly can’t be tested for. 

“I don’t think the worldwide antidoping effort has been sufficient. Each country has differing rules, loopholes and gaps in policy. We need to harmonise efforts to be able to have true belief. On current scant resources, they will never get on top.”

"Yes" – Dan Lloyd 

“I don’t think anyone got into this sport thinking, ‘I can’t wait to shove a needle in my arm’” Professional rider for more than a decade until 2012, and now director of racing at GCN, Dan Lloyd has a positive outlook on the current state of play in the pro peloton. 

“The doping question is an impossible one to answer, especially as I’m on the periphery of racing now. My opinion has always been that the sport came from a time where the vast majority of people were doping to some degree because it had become the norm. I’m sure there are still some people who are trying to cheat the system, but it’s not the norm anymore. Most people are doing it the right way, whereas before it was a system in which everyone played that [doping] game. 

“I think because the fall-out from the Lance [Armstrong] years didn’t come until 2013, there has been a delayed reaction. Everything people thought they knew about pro cycling was swept away. There is now an assumption that if you see an amazing performance, it’s because of more than just bread, water, hard training and scientific advancements. 

“I believe the shift away from doping was originally sponsorforced. We got to the point where the reputation of cycling was so bad, sponsors weren’t willing to take the risk. In the initial stages of change [riders were advised], ‘We can’t organise doping within the team anymore, it’s too risky, but you know what to do, so go ahead and do it alone in private.’ Then it felt like there was another marked shift in 2009-10 where bosses of teams said that we just can’t do this at all anymore. I get the sense now that the whole attitude to doping in the sport has changed. Riders don’t even have to make a choice like they used to.”

This full version of this article was published in the 24 November 2022 print edition of Cycling Weekly .  Subscribe online and get the magazine delivered direct to your door every week. 

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Joe Laverick is a professional cyclist and freelance writer. Hailing from Grimsby but now living in Girona, Joe swapped his first love of football for two wheels in 2014 – the consequence of which has, he jokes, been spiralling out of control ever since. Proud of never having had a "proper job", Joe is aiming to keep it that way for as long as possible. He is also an unapologetic coffee snob.

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From Lance to Landis: Inside the American Doping Controversy at the Tour de France Kindle Edition

• Print length 362 pages
• Language English
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• Publisher Ballantine Books
• Publication date June 26, 2007
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• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B000URWYRK
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Ballantine Books (June 26, 2007)
• Publication date ‏ : ‎ June 26, 2007
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• File size ‏ : ‎ 1573 KB
• Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
• Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
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• Print length ‏ : ‎ 362 pages
• #161 in Sociology of Sports (Kindle Store)
• #240 in Cycling (Kindle Store)
• #552 in History of Sports

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David walsh.

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Customers find the book an interesting and good read that provides an insight into the world of pro cyclists. They also say the writing style is well written and easy to follow.

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"... It's a great book , and the overriding emotion at the end is not, "Gotcha!"..." Read more

"...evils of Lance Armstrong (and you should) this is the one. Great read , painful story to read, but Lance has admitted all..." Read more

"...The stories of the people Walsh interviewed are extremely interesting , and they offer an unique view into what goes on day-to-day behind the scenes..." Read more

"This is a great book to learn more about the history of doping in professional cycling and for this I would recommend it as a starting place for any..." Read more

Customers find the book great, well-explained, and informative. They also say it's a basic book for anyone interested in the topic. Customers also mention the author does a good job presenting the interviews and allowing the reader to decide.

"...In this context, David Walsh's book provides a meticulous and detailed analysis not just of the allegations, but of the context...." Read more

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"...Walsh play the journalist role here and he does a good job at presenting the interviews and allowing the reader to decide who to believe...." Read more

"...the better ones as it tries to narrow it's focus a bit so it is easier to follow i am still not sure if i should loath the riders or feel sorry for..." Read more

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