“Yes.”
It took one word for the whole world to finally see Lance Armstrong for the drug cheat some had been attacked for claiming him to be. In an exclusive interview with famed TV host Oprah Winfrey screened on the UK in the early hours of January 18, 2013, the former Tour de France icon was asked if he had ever taken banned substances to enhance his cycling performance, and the single-word answer changed the sport forever.
Four more ‘Yeses’ later, he had admitted to using EPO, blood doping and using other banned substances, one or all of them coming in winning his seven Tour de France titles. He’d called his former assistant, Emma O’Reilly, “an alcoholic” and “a whore” when she blew the whistle on his wide-ranging drug use and his attempts to cover his tracks.
He was a bully, a liar, a cheat. He admitted as much. In the end.
But he wasn’t the only one. When he told Oprah “I didn’t invent the culture, but I didn’t try to stop the culture,” it was about the truest thing any cyclist has ever uttered. The doping culture was rife. Cycling had become a sport in which everyone suspected the vast majority were dirty until proven clean.
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Between 1997 and 2009, according to extensive research, only 26 of the 130 top-10 places at the Tour de France were filled by riders who have not been at least implicated in doping scandals. Armstrong famously had his seven titles stripped in 2012, but there were many, many others who had crossed the line at one stage or another.
There was the Festina affair of 1998, which saw all nine of the team’s riders admit to having used EPO during that year’s Tour. Floyd Landis had his 2006 title taken away after testing positive for synthetic testosterone after stage 17, while another man to stand on the top step at the Champs Elysee, Alberto Contador, had the last of his wins – in 2010 – stripped for use of clenbuterol. None of those who were handed the yellow jersey at the end of the Tours between 1991 and 2013 remained unimplicated throughout their careers.
Scottish four-time Tour de France stage winner David Millar admitted to having used EPO more than once, and later wrote a powerful article for the New York Times entitled ‘How To Get Away With Doping’. Hackers also released Therapeutic Use Exemption certificates of a number of riders, including British TdF winners Chris Froome and Bradley Wiggins, which called into question the validity of some exemption claims. Millar claimed the revelations helped to “open the world’s eyes” and clean up the sport as a result.
There are certainly fewer implications being tossed around these days. Geraint Thomas, the 2018 Tour winner, is a vehement anti-doping advocate, while the likes of Egan Bernal, Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard, who have won the last four titles between them, have never tested positive for any banned substance. There will always be questions, of course, with Pogacar’s immense power having drawn lazy questions about his doping status during his 2021 win, but the longer the sport goes without high-profile cases, the cleaner its image.
Some have claimed in the past that cycling has gained its reputation for being a drug-riven sport simply because its testing process is that much more bulletproof than the likes of football, rugby and athletics. The Lance Armstrong case certainly undermined that opinion, but perhaps the American’s ban and eventual admission helped to dissuade others from stepping beyond the boundaries. His reputation and legacy in tatters, Armstrong’s path was not one worth treading.
With a major lesson having eventually been learned, the modern elite cyclist no longer faces questions about doping the second they cross the finish line. Long may that continue.
*18+ | BeGambleAware | Odds Subject to Change
