"I hope that's not the case because honestly, I don't think we'll ever recover" - Lotto Dstny boss on doping concerns after Tadej Pogacar's Tour de France dominance

There has simply been no stopping Tadej Pogacar in 2024. Simply a level above the rest, the Slovenian has become the first rider to win the Giro d'Italia and Tour de France in the same year since 1998, won 12 Grand Tour stages and worn leader's jerseys for a record breaking number of days.

Given the dark cloud of doping that hangs over the murky figures of cycling's past dominators such as Lance Armstrong and even Eddy Merckx himself, the question has been raised again by some following Pogacar's all-conquering season. Following the time-trial finale in Nice on Sunday, won by Pogacar, Lotto Dstny boss Stephane Heulot gave reflection to this talk.

"Nothing to say, the best won. It's normal to have doubts, it's normal that cycling's past shows that it hasn't always been rosy when we sometimes have the impression that history repeats itself regularly," Heulot tells Cyclism'Actu about any potential doping in the peloton in 2024. "I hope that's not the case because honestly, I don't think we'll ever recover."

"But it would be illusory to believe that everything is settled. We are always marked by history and that makes it normal to have doubts," continues the Lotto Dstny boss, also noting the strange feel as the Grand Tour concluded in Nice rather than the usual bunch sprint on the iconic cobbles of the Champs Elysees. "We don't have the feeling of having finished the Tour, it's quite surprising. So it's true that it was an extremely complicated Tour for the adventurers in fact."

Notably, Pogacar himself has already spoken out on any doping rumours. "There will always be doubts, because cycling was so damaged in the past. Before my time," Pogacar said in the post-race press conference. "In any sport, in any situation of life, if somebody's winning, there’s always jealousy, there’s always haters. If you don’t have haters, you’re not succeeding. There will always be someone who talks bad about someone. In cycling, WADA and the UCI have invested a lot of money and time to make this sport clean, and I think this is one of the cleanest sports in the whole world because of what happened so many years ago."