Greg LeMond Interview
- Thread starter limerickman
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Bro Deal said:
You have no point. He wasn't cheated out of any victories by anyone that he's complaining about. He's complaining about being cheated out of his status as the best ever American.
What a great interview!!! Thank you Greg Lemond. Our sport needs more top riders of the present and past to take courage and speak up!
When I was racing Cat 1 at a very high level, and latter in my career, in 94- through 97 EVERYONE on our team doped. The minimum was just like Greg said, Testosterone, at about 150 mg weekly with a needle in the ass or lateral thigh. I am not prode of it. However, it was considered suicide to enter a big race clean. It would be, and still is, like entering Miss America without make up...NO CHANCE to reach the podium let alone win.
I was damn good without dope but when I doped with testosterone, and especially EPO, my sustainable power at threshold would jump by 20% in 4 months!!! Some guys would see even greater gains.
I can't believe that there are people around that actually believe that the top riders of the past 13 years were/are clean....it just blows me away! I hope all "these" guys listen to this excellent interview!
When I was racing Cat 1 at a very high level, and latter in my career, in 94- through 97 EVERYONE on our team doped. The minimum was just like Greg said, Testosterone, at about 150 mg weekly with a needle in the ass or lateral thigh. I am not prode of it. However, it was considered suicide to enter a big race clean. It would be, and still is, like entering Miss America without make up...NO CHANCE to reach the podium let alone win.
I was damn good without dope but when I doped with testosterone, and especially EPO, my sustainable power at threshold would jump by 20% in 4 months!!! Some guys would see even greater gains.
I can't believe that there are people around that actually believe that the top riders of the past 13 years were/are clean....it just blows me away! I hope all "these" guys listen to this excellent interview!
I agree with you on the doping part. And why would the riders in this country during the late 70's and early 80's feel any differently then you and your team mates about doping? We know of blood boosting was occurring in the early 80's in US cycling. Speedballs were common in the 70's among even the lower cat riders. Let me re-phrase that..... Speedballs may have been common. I have zero knowledge of anything.TiMan said:What a great interview!!! Thank you Greg Lemond. Our sport needs more top riders of the present and past to take courage and speak up!
When I was racing Cat 1 at a very high level, and latter in my career, in 94- through 97 EVERYONE on our team doped. The minimum was just like Greg said, Testosterone, at about 150 mg weekly with a needle in the ass or lateral thigh. I am not prode of it. However, it was considered suicide to enter a big race clean. It would be, and still is, like entering Miss America without make up...NO CHANCE to reach the podium let alone win.
I have a real strong feeling that this in not just the past 13 years. Maybe EPO, but not doping.
Why didn't Greg speak out about it when he was riding both in the US and when he went to Europe? He now only speaks out against riders of a different riding time then him.
Here is the thing....... Lemond had to be remendously strong to beat Kelly, Fignon, Knetteman, Kuiper, and others on a regular basis. I think it was pretty well documented that these guys doped. But Greg was silent.
We had tremendous doping going on in the 70's..... Merckx, the boys at the powerhouse Ti-Raleigh, Kelly's team, and a few others. Then Greg says we had a real dope problem with Indurains time that was right after Greg's time. Something is not quite right.
Let's put it this way......If you eliminate all the riders who admitted it, were convicted of it, or Greg said "they did it," basically that leaves just Greg as the only dope free TDF winner in the past 30 years.
Just look at the list ..... I should say I never heard anything about Roche..... But winning the Giro, TDf and worlds against the others? We would have to ask Lim what the perception of Roche as far as getting extra help.....
006 Floyd Landis, USA
1999 Lance Armstrong, USA
1998 Marco Pantani, ITA
1997 Jan Ullrich, GER
1996 Bjarne Riis, DEN
1995 Miguel Indurain, ESP
1988 Pedro Delgado, ESP
1987 Stephen Roche, IRE
1986 Greg Lemond, USA
1985 Bernard Hinault, FRA
1984 Laurent Fignon, FRA
1980 Joop Zoetemelk, HOL
1976 Lucien Van Impe, BEL J
1975 Bernard Thevenet, FRA E
1974 Eddy Merckx, BEL
wolfix said:
Yes....true to a great extend BUT....the only thing that REALLY made a HUGE difference is EPO. Testosterone and GH help you recover but it is the EPO that builds the hematocrit needed to be able to sustain super high power outputs. But combine them all and look out!
Blood doping works too but not as well because in blood doping many cells in the tranfusions are useless...dead. Blood doping was around in the early 80's but I don't think it was used in pro cycling to any great extent until much latter.
As Lemond said in his interview.....all of a sudden in the early 90's power outputs went through the roof. Why?>>> because doctors like Ferarri "got it down" and really knew how to use EPO with testosterone and GH. It was only then that former non contenders like Indurain and Armstrong could be changed into machines almost over night.
Also, and this is VERY important, not everyone responds the same to EPO therapy. I got a 20% boost but some others only get 10%. The men with the lowest natural hematocrits, like me and Armstrong 40-41%, get the biggest boost in sustainable power when we are jacked to 50% plus.
Also, there are other fators that we don't understand about drug therapy that NEVER make it a level playing field. Some guys just respond really really well and others not so much.
Sure
Based on my interpretation of Greg’s comments, your post accurately summarizes his stance on doping and its effect on race outcomes. He clearly believes that sometime in the early 90’s “something big” happened that boosted power outputs by a considerable margin. Mediocre cyclists were elevated to performance levels that blew away non-doped champions, and the magnitude of the gains can’t be accounted for by subtle improvements in training methods. There may well have been doping in the pro peleton prior to that period, but the impact of doping became more pronounced in the early 90’s.TiMan said:
Your theory about what accounted for this sudden increase in power outputs (Ferrari and his like perfecting the application of EPO) sounds plausible to me. It should be straightforward to check if Greg is right about the power gains. Simply compare recent and past times up benchmark climbs in the Grand Tours and convert to wattage. If there really was a big jump in power output – and I’m guessing Greg wouldn’t have made these comments carelessly, knowing it would be easy for others to double-check the validity of them – then I’d be interested to hear opposing theories from members of this forum who believe there is some other way to account for the increases. If power outputs did suddenly and substantially increase because of dope, does anybody here consider it likely that any recent Grand Tour champions could have managed to elevate themselves to these new, unnatural levels of power output while remaining dope free?
While I find his overall argument persuasive, one thing bugs me about Greg’s comments. He’d previously claimed to applaud Armstrong’s accomplishments in the TdF, and only became disillusioned about Armstrong after learning of his association with Ferrari. If Greg knew in 1993 that the big jump in power output had to be connected to doping, then it seems he would have been suspicious of Armstrong’s winning TdF performances from the outset. Armstrong’s power numbers were in the range that Greg believes couldn’t be accounted for naturally.
Who knows what might have happened in 1991 if Lemond had not burned himself up chasing dopers in the Pyrenees. In many interviews with Lemond I get the impression that he is angry that he was screwed not just once, but twice. First he was shot and lost two years, and second dopers took more time from him after he made it back to the top.DiabloScott said:
If you're saying Lemond doped, well of course he did. I mean, come on. People use the same argument against Armstrong: "Are you saying he beat all these doped riders and he was clean?" Nope. Of course not. He doped too.wolfix said:
But, to wonder why he said nothing at the time? Because -- and I'm sure you already know this, wolf, but for those truly wondering -- it's because the peloton would put his ass in the gutter. Maybe not for one statement, but a couple statements? They'd put his ass in the gutter over and over again. TdF champ or not.
It's the same reason a batter doesn't talk smack to the pitcher in baseball. Because the pitcher will stick a fastball in your ear.
Homeboy doped. I think he justifies it the dope he did, steroids, as a helper. "It was helpful or it helped in recovery," like there's a medicinal use, like it helps me from not getting sick when I ride all these hard miles.
I don't know. Excuse the rant. I guess EPO is just way more helpful and therefore evil.
helmutRoole2 said:
Maybe...but I think the interview is an honest one. I especially sat up and took note when Greg started talking about how the guilt from years of lieing will start to eat away at you after 10-15 or 20 years. Well, I have experienced this first hand and I never went on and on and on that I was clean as guys like Armstrong do. At least Indurain would simply say "no comment" when asked about drug use. But to tell the public over and over and over again that you are clean and then to shoot down guys as crazy or as cycling back stabbers that do come out and admit that they used drugs is sickening to me.
Anyone that knows about power outputs knows that you simply cannot go from high 300's to high 400's in hour long efforts without blood boosting. Guys like Lemond and Hinualt were genetic freaks and they trained really smart. They were putting out upper 300's in long climbs and then BOOM...along comes Indurain, Armstrong, Ullich, Basso etc etc and others with 100 more watts.
It is time this sport cleaned up....that will level the playing field and keep men as men.
In the end the truth will come out.
It should start with you then and not by spilling your guts on this forum. Send a letter to VeloNews and use your real name.TiMan said:
I don't see it as being shameful.
Bro Deal said:
If I remember right, he missed the second year because of appendicitis. He might not have been back to top form but he was pretty much recovered from the gunshot. I think he was planning on riding the 88 Tour, but of course Delgado was unbeatable that year anyway.
What's up with the one sentence responses, Tim? I've seen about six of them today and can't figure out what the hell you talking about.Tim Lamkin said:
Expound.
DiabloScott said:
Winning magazine used to be sold over here too : and I think that was down to Greg leMond being the first non-European TDF winner.
I have some old copies of Winning Magazine too.
The coverage that LeMond got when he was competing in the TDF in 83/84/85/86/89 was huge over here : he was part of the "english speaking" cyclists as the media referred to them here.
The man was a superstar.
You're right Hinault did have a go at LeMond : and how we cheered when he beat Hinault in 1986 !
Although LeMond winning in Chambery in 1989 wasn't a happy occasion for us
Kelly supporters.
But hey, LeMond showed that he could win any race on any given day - and that's the mark of a great cyclist, I think.
TiMan said:did you know that in Germany "Der Kaiser" is Franz Beckenbauer, German soccer ledgend and not Ullrich.
Hmmm, where I'm from it's a hamburger bun.
Winning Magazine was a British publication which there was also a US edition which was the same as the British version but they would leave out one article and put in a report on some crappy US race (oh and letter from American readers !).... brilliant magazine and at the time probably the only English language publication that reported on the pro scene..... a young WBT used to have his ordered and air freighted from the UK to Australia months ahead of when they normally arrived.... I was obsessed… ! My bedroom wall was Raul Alalca, Greg LeMond (in PDM colours), Charlie Mottet and Mario Fondriest winning the world champs……. Oh and I also had a picture of Pat Benatar in the Love is a battlefield videoclip…~
limerickman said:
Fondriest... is he the Fiere of his time or is it the other way around? That guy was always in it come world championship time. The year he won when Bauer put Crique in the gutter... I would have rather seen the sprint. I guess Bauer wasn't very popular back at his home camp in Belgium. in fact, Jennie Gollay told me that people used to throw rocks through his windows and routinely make death threats. I used to like Crique until he sued Bauer over the incident. Man, what a tool.whiteboytrash said:
But yes, Winning Magazine... brilliant rag. Graham Watson and one other photographer -- can't recall his name but I think he was Italian -- set that magazine apart. It really was the standard by which all others would be measured for some time to come.
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