Greg LeMond: new generations are erasing 20 years of doping in cycling
Leonardo Mena Gil
La Jornada Newspaper
Sunday March 17, 2024, p. a10
Erythropoietin (EPO) is an illegal substance that has dogged road cycling for more than three decades. In 1990, the Medical Commission of the International Olympic Committee detected it and added it to the list of prohibited drugs. However, it was not until 1997 that the first history of massive doping came to light.
American Greg LeMond, three-time champion of the Tour of France, remembers it as if it were yesterday. With a gesture she says it all. She knows that he came to change the course of a sport that he practiced at a professional level for more than 14 years.
It was a before and after, assimilate. From that moment on the traps began. It was a time when I began to see a lot of unusual talent, she commented at the first edition of the Bicycle Film Festival in Mexico City.
The Fedrina case, at the end of the last century, came to show the dark side. The EPO, at that time undetectable, was put in the eye of the hurricane for the first time just as the members of that team were moving towards the Tour. On the bus in which they were traveling, 200 vials of EPO were found, a substance that increases red blood cells and allows better performance in aerobic exercise activities.
That scandal was a watershed for creating the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).
Since 2010, LeMond admitted that the increase in doping cases contributed to his lack of competitiveness. Something changed in cycling. The speeds were faster and the riders I had previously beaten were now passing me. Even in 1994, the year in which he retired professionally, he was tempted to fall into these bad practices.
▲ During his stay he recalled the birth of one of the biggest scandals in sport, the doping of someone who was considered the best cyclist in history, Lance Armstrong, one of his staunch rivals. Photo José Antonio López
A great opponent of the use of banned substances, LeMond was one of the first to reveal Lance Armstrong’s tricks in 2001.
It was in a meeting, he remembers, when he connected the dots of the complicity between Lance and the Italian doctor Michael Ferrari, one of the greatest exponents of doping.
In front of everyone, he told me, Greg, it’s not the same as when you ran, because now we have the growth hormones that Dr. Ferrari has developed and that makes us better. Then it came back positive and Nike paid to keep the tests from being made public.
The end of the lie
In 2012, the lie that Armstrong constructed was revealed by himself. With the confession, all of his titles were withdrawn, including the seven Tours from France and an Olympic medal.
For 20 years we saw that due to doping, cyclists either joined it or had to quit. Now we are observing how this new generation is returning to the sport with greater competitiveness, something that has not been seen since the 80s.
He believes that the Mexican Isaac del Toro, currently in his first year in the world cycling elite, has the potential to win the French race.
2024-03-17 08:12:16
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