"Never, ever listen to Lance Armstrong about anything" - Ex-pro slams disgraced American's advice to Tadej Pogacar during Tour de France

During the 2024 Tour de France, Tadej Pogacar thrilled fans with his relentlessly attacking riding, winning six stages and taking a third Maillot Jaune of his career ahead of great rival Jonas Vingegaard.

After every stage of the Tour de France however, arguably the most controversial figure in cycling, Lance Armstrong, reflected on the day's events via his podcast The Move, alongside the likes of Johan Bruyneel, George Hincapie and Sir Bradley Wiggins. Speaking about Pogacar's domination of the race and desire to win as many stages as possible, Armstrong warned the Slovenian leader of UAE Team Emirates: "don't give people a reason to hate you" and "don't give them a reason to doubt you."

Former American professional turned Strava KOM hunter, Phillip Gaimon however believes any opinion, advice or warning from someone as disgraced as Armstrong should be immediately thrown away and ignored. "Never, ever listen to Lance Armstrong about anything," the 38-year-old former Garmin - Sharp rider brutally assesses on his own podcast.

"People keep doing these climb comparisons. They're looking at the climbs from Pantani and Lance and Ulrich and all those guys. And of course, Tadej smashed a tonne of those this year. And you look at that, it's like, oh, well, that's a bad sign," continues Gaiman. "But then look at this is 25, 30 years ago for a lot of those. Think about if you went to ride Pantani's bike right now up a hill, you'd be like, 'ew'. Everything has progressed. All sports progress, technology has progressed, aerodynamics, equipment."

"And then you get into like nutrition and training. Every sport is going to get faster over time. Cycling from a certain era was going to regress a little bit and then progress over time. Am I saying Tadej is clean? No, I don't know that guy. But I see a lot of comments like, 'man, don't be naive, everyone's doing it'. No, they're not. That is absolutely not true. I know a lot of guys in the peloton still, I'm very close friends with a handful of them," he concludes. "I'm not best friends with anyone on the podium, but I'm super tight with people who are very high up, who have gotten significant results this year, whose names have been mentioned in these events, who I trust thoroughly. So is everyone doing it? No, even back then, that wasn't the case."