23/04/2023

Johan Bruyneel on the Tour de France editions that Lance Armstrong won: "90% of the peloton was taking EPO"

Johan Bruyneel, the former director of US Postal when Lance Armstrong won the 7 Tour de France he was subsequently stripped of, doesn't understand why the American was eventually stripped of his trophies and explains in Het Laatste Nieuws and picked up by Triathlon Diary colleagues that he considers ASO's decision "ridiculous".

"Trying to rewrite the history of the Tour de France by removing a seven-time winner from the lists, as ASO is trying to do, is quite ridiculous," he said. It's ridiculous that those seven Tour de France were raced and no one has won it. Ask your opponents from that era who won the Tour from 1999 to 2005. Ullrich won't say he won, Basso and Klöden won't say he won, Zülle and Beloki won't say they won."

"We had to win. Not winning was not an option" - Johan Bruyneel draws parallels between US Postal and Jumbo-Visma

He believes that what caused the American to finally be punished was that they went over the heads of the race organizers:

"At one point, Armstrong was more important than the Tour. The Tour struggled to deal with this. We took the opportunity, we said to the organizers, 'We're more important than you.'.... And this was then punished...". Bruyneel explains that he retired and immediately became a director, so he knew perfectly well how doping worked at the time:

"There are now statistics that only Merckx and Pogacar can present" - Johan Bruyneel

"The year 1996 was the year of the peak of EPO use. I was a runner at that time and I also used EPO. "Do I regret it? No. I was part of this generation, it was like that at the time. It was either join this movement to be able to go on or go home but I won't name names."

On doping, he makes it clear that it was widespread throughout the peloton at the time:

"Blood transfusions? Yes, that's true. The 'Motorman' who went to Nice with EPO in the fridge? That's also true. What's better? In other teams we hid EPO in the tires of the cars. At that time, between 1999 to 2001, the system was as follows. The top twenty, thirty, forty and fifty in the Tour classification were doped with EPO and 90% of the peloton was taking EPO."