Greg LeMond gives Tadej Pogacar 'benefit of doubt' in regard to doping: "There's only one person I saw the real physical evidence to go: that guy's doing something not right"
Cycling
Greg LeMond is one of the icons of American cycling, winning the Tour de France on three occasions in 1986, 1989 and 1990. At the French Grand Tour this year though, Tadej Pogacar dominated en route to writing one of the most successful seasons in cycling history.
The Slovenian's brilliance hasn't been totally without criticism though, although LeMond himself believes he can theorise an explanation for the record breaking performances seen in 2024. "I do believe the riders today, compared to when we were about, have lost muscle mass. The average rider today, I think would be racing three four kilos lighter and for every kilo it's about a minute up a climb," he explains to Eurosport.
LeMond himself has been outspoken in the past against doping, but he doesn't feel that response should be the automatic one whenever a rider starts impressing. "I like to give people the benefit of doubt," he smiles. "There's only one person I saw the real physical evidence to go: 'that guy's doing something not right'," he adds, referring to Lance Armstrong.
"In my calculations, I've got Pogacar doing 410 / 420 watts and that's absolutely in the realm that I could have done," LeMond continues. "It's hard to compare eras and it's hard to go: 'because they're beating the EPO period that they have to be on EPO', I'm just saying there's some real logic as to why riders are going faster today and it's not new training theories, it's that they're under the gun to race and it's all power to weight ratio."
"Pogacar really is an incredible talent. So, it's 'amazing' what he's doing, but whether it was the Eddy Merckx era of Anquetil in the 80s, at the Tour de France there's just always one or two riders that are above," the American concludes. "So as dominating as he was, he really wasn't that much more dominating than Vingegaard."
Tadej is the new Lance Armstrong of the 20s . His plea will be the same as Lance's " Everyone else was doing it so it was a level field. Look at Tennis with both # 1s testing positive for banned substances. Both claim they have no idea how it happened. Riiiiight ,, okay . Which way did he go George, Which way did he go? Duuuuh ,,,, Mikey Out. Ooooooh Yeah !!!!!
Exactly. The fall will be epic. Le Mond said that hr knew Armstrong was doping, beacuse he didn't breath hard going uphill full gas. And what about Dopačar? He ain't even sweating! If Lance could get away for such a long time with doping, so can others do today. The show must go on. Nobody needs to have it clean. Only the show matters. Who have caught Armstrong? American officials, not UCI or ASO. The way cycling is biased today beacuse of doping makes watching it worthless. TDF or the wonderfull day of O'Connor in La Vuelta, when the whole peloton not only couldn't catch him, but lost time. These types of bullshit competitions makes me wanna puke.
I have no need to inject my opinion on who is clean or who was clean. WHy bother then or now? Maybe these are of interest to folks: 4 hours of LeMond conversations in 2 places about Lance/Greg subject and the history and he discusses VO2max and performance and just generally on-topic interesting things. (1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xq5PQvBFvI&t=1671s (2) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kFSe3VxS10 Secondly, 2 podcasts on the topic of "what did WADA and UCI and USAC know or care about any of it" ...sort of...among other things: (3) Tyler Hamilton Oct 2022 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/forgiveness-re-birth-with-tyler-hamilton-previously/id1224143549?i=1000583108004 (4) Floyd Landis Aug 2024 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/floyd-landis-doping-in-sport-nothing-has-changed/id1763846046?i=1000666035836
Sorry the formatting of that now sucks. Don't blame me...must be like the unusability of this site with the 78329235789 ads that have to load.
I can’t even see your post properly, it shows up in the list of latest posts, it briefly shows by itself under the article but it vanishes when you unfold to see all posts. They have a major amateur working behind the scenes here. A few days ago the whole webpage was hidden by an ad that was impossible to remove.
Why is Greg always mentioning Armstrong negatively, while knowing but never mentioning that all of Armstrong's competitors were doping also? It couldn't be that Greg wants to be sure he's always known as the only USA winner of TDF could it? Give it a rest Greg. Armstrong's 7 (!) TDF wins should still be acknowledged as wins & only struck if all known dopers' wins are struck eg Bjarne Riis' 2005 win (Riis has since publicly admitted he was on EPO), Marco Pantani's win 1998 (obviously was on EPO), Jan Ullrich's win 1997 (publicly admitted took EPO, steroids thru his career), etc. The cyclingnews.com site has the same problem whenever Armstrong comes up. Greg ought to go ride with Armstrong -- except Greg looks so out of shape, I doubt he could.
Original thought but unlikely. I think it’s just the least complicated way to say something that will be published. Let me ask you, how many of Bankman-Fried or Madoff’s contemporaries or even associates can you name? Do you really think if Lemond would make a lame (i.e. expected or already heard otherwise) comment about Pantani or Rijs or Ullrich or any other, anyone would publish it, even off-season? That’s how the media system works.
tl;dr - Because Armstrong made it a personal mission to ruin LeMond and his partnership with Trek and financially kill him.
Not Chad Gerlach. He only used heroin (and sold a little on the side). I think that is okay since it doesn't make you go fast.
Chad was a heroin user and dealer, by his own admission. Kinda nuts how some people are pro-heroin but anti-EPO. Unless you are Chad, in which case I understand how you are pro-heroin.
Thank goodness the only clean rider to ever win the Tour has given his half-hearted blessing to Pogacar. Thank goodness for iron injections.
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- Coz it’s not an Olympic year ;-)Mistermaumau15-04-2025
- Rock/hard place, still need the points.Mistermaumau15-04-2025
- These days you get paid a lot better to suck it up so I guess there are fewer complaints now ;-) Anyway, the faster bike argument these days is about as significant the whiter washing powders, only instruments can “feel” the difference unless a manufacturer makes a major cock-up. There is always one exception though, a rider that’s more “comfortable” on a slightly slower bike will probably be faster than on a faster uncomfortable one in all but the shortest time trials, the mental fatigue of discomfort is often ignored, in fact many mental tweaks have probably not been integrated yet, the most interesting topic of the future will be what will be considered mental doping and what will be considered acceptable, anyone?Mistermaumau15-04-2025
- 2011 won by wheel sucker Cadel Evans and 2015 Chris Frome with Team Sky.
James2631815-04-2025 - Hopefully the women won’t be requesting equal prize money as for the men’s race. Even an average week long men’s race is harder than this travesty.
UltimateOpportunist15-04-2025 - So is Pogacar, whose rivals are van der Poel in the monuments and Vingegaard at the Tour, doing the same with his limited calendar of race days?RidesHills15-04-2025
- An interesting description, but I think it misses his motivations. He meets a goal and moves on. Van der Poel does race the Tour, though lately as lead out for Philipsen, after achieving the goal of wearing yellow one day. Same with the Giro, he met his goal and moved on. But yes, lately that sure looks like winning the monuments more than anything else.RidesHills15-04-2025
- Totally agree, if only for the reason that it sends the totally wrong message not to treat it that way, let’s get drunk then we can do stupid things without much punishment, and the drunker the safer. In fact, if alcohol is accepted as a reason for turning to bad behaviour, perhaps representatives of the industry should systematically also be punished financially when there are convictions.Mistermaumau15-04-2025
- I mean the year before cables were external aspect should help narrow down the options as that can only be 1 year if you look at every bike it's the year cables disappeared.HoopoeChai15-04-2025
- If other riders just give up when VDP and Pog turn up to race why bother at all. Sad to hear this attitude and there is the problem riders saying we have lost before the start . We have seen loads of time both riders can be beaten. Less neg and more positive.paultryan200215-04-2025