LeMond III

[red_flanders]

Well here we go again. Enjoy the thread, folks.

 

[sniper]

@nomad,
As for Lemond possibly using corticosteroids, read this:

The delicate thing is this: I suffered from allergies throughout my career and I've realised, post career, that I was drastically hindered by allergies during the month of May. But you can test for that - to see which pollens bring it on; these are legitimate back up tests for a TUE. Now the medication for things like this is cortisone, but it's obviously not the best thing to do to take cortisone throughout a three-week race. There's a delicate line. http://www.eurosport.com/cycling/lemond-itll-be-a-froome-contador-shoot-out-as-eurosport-announce-widest-ever-tour-coverage_sto4706045/story.shtml

Now while that is neither proof nor evidence, it is difficult to read that and think he never used it.
He speaks like an expert.
Bottomline: I'd be surprised if Lemond never used it, when (a) so many around him did use it and (b) he suffered from something for which, as he says, cortisone was the regular treatment.

 

[@NL_LeMondFans]

If you have time, could you, or anyone who has Fignon's book, give us doubters the relevant quote from his book about Lemond? Would love to read it.

Yeah, good idea. Consult the person on Earth who hated LeMond the most to get reliable information on LeMond.

Good thinking, there.

 

[red_flanders]

So here's the actual context, not that there's anything to explain about those completely innocuous comments:

BS: But should riders who need a therapeutic use exemption be racing in the first place?

GL: It's all about defining the rules. If the rules say you can get a TUE if you go through this process then it shouldn't be controversial and there should be a process in place to ensure that the TUEs are legitimate. But doctors shouldn't be giving someone a cortisone shot for an infection. If you have a hyper-allergic reaction or a knee swelling - that's when you have good reason for a TUE. But bacterial infections - you don't treat with cortisone. I don't know what Froome had. I assumed it was an allergic reaction. But a good medical doctor can make a determination on what merits a TUE. If you are sick, you're prescribed antibiotics; if you're too sick, you just go home.

The delicate thing is this: I suffered from allergies throughout my career and I've realised, post career, that I was drastically hindered by allergies during the month of May. But you can test for that - to see which pollens bring it on; these are legitimate back up tests for a TUE. Now the medication for things like this is cortisone, but it's obviously not the best thing to do to take cortisone throughout a three-week race. There's a delicate line. There are legitimate people who take asthma medication. It's fairly common. The physical demands of cycling is that it actually lowers your immune system and you expose yourself to a tremendous amount of elements - so certain people might get a chronic overload and develop, say, bad asthma. So, what's the right way to go? If you're a professional racer and it's not bothered you for ten years, then suddenly you're hit by an allergy - that's probably when you decide to apply for a TUE.

BS: Just look at the case of Diego Ulissi, one of those exciting young riders you perhaps alluded to earlier...

GL: As an allergy sufferer, it's interesting to look at this case. Grass is a very prominent allergen. My sister-in-law is one of the top allergists in the country and it's a legitimate issue - and so in this period of May and June some of these guys are probably really suffering. Now I'd take Salbutamol myself because if you let your asthma overreact then it can get worse. So it's a very delicate issue. The question you have to ask is whether or not you take Salbutamol with a TUE. You can do fairly simple tests and get the lowdown. I don't think that if you're suffering a major asthma attack then taking Salbutamol can really be seen as a performance enhancer. The reality is that asthma affects your airways and it has a huge impact on your performance. I experience a 25% drop in power output and that's me now in the poor shape I'm in. My performances in the Giro were constantly hampered by allergies.

So now knowing what cortisone is and why it's prescribed, while being "neither proof nor evidence" is introduced as an argument that he took it. This is nonsense. In the strongest sense of the word.

This is the level of discussion that's been happening on this thread, and people wonder why members like myself respond or are blown away by the level of foolishness.

Of course you miss the part where he openly acknowledges that he took Salbutamol, in the very typically candid way he talks about his career and what went on.

 

[@NL_LeMondFans]

It was rumored about in a Dutch newspaper and by the likes of Floyd Landis, Rudy Dhaenens (who indeed rode with Lemond) and Michael Boogerd (someone not exactly known for spilling beans on others).

If you were honest in your logic, you would at least acknowledge that said rumors most likely came out from :
a/ex-dopers jealous of a rider that has x10 their best performances
b/Said rumors most likely came from dope enablers, i/e people trying to have the riders you're talking about to dope in the first place. "Take it, that's what LeMond takes".
And since their doping got them nowhere near Greg ended up, please refer to a/ again.

 

[Tienus]

the comments you read up-thread from Nijs. ""Lemond do not want to use drugs. He is stubborn and always just rely only on his own production."

I would take that quote with a pinch of salt.

Paul Nijs was a pharmacist who sold dope to riders. He worked with Freddy Maertens who had a most remarkeble comeback in 1981. Maertens stopped working with him because he felt like being a guinea pig.


Why did Lemond choose to work with this guy?

 

[Semper Fidelis]

"Everyone" is jealous of Lemond.

For some reason I was not aware he was jacked up on meds for asthma.

Asthma is the ultimate crutch for endurance athletes. So easy for them to fall back on "da asthma bro" card.

So glad he is candid. Other wise we would not have all those flip flops.

 

[sniper]

Re:

For some reason I was not aware he was jacked up on meds for asthma.

"I'd take salbutamol myself".
That's an interesting statement from Lemond.

The myth:

Otto Jacome 1988: '[H]e's clean - he's never taken any drugs. He won't even take vitamin shots. That will help him, too.''
''It's his cardiovascular system,'' Jacome said, tapping his chest. ''It's a gift, you have to be born with it.
http://www.nytimes.com/1988/06/05/magazine/struggling-back.html?pagewanted=all

Phil Anderson 2012:
I recall LeMond’s absolute stance against any medications during his career.
...
He, like many cyclists, has had to deal with losses at the hands of the cheats. He, like many, chose not to take advice and gifts of treatments from soigneur’s ‘vitamins’ – the contents of which were not know to him."
http://www.velonation.com/News/ID/13448/Anderson-vouches-for-LeMonds-integrity-as-a-pro-says-he-could-make-solid-interim-UCI-President.aspx

QS: There is a huge culture of the needle in cycling.
Greg: Well, they all took Vitamin B12 shots…I mean, who knows what else they took.
QS: You never succumbed?
Greg: Never. I took a multi-vitamin if I remembered to take a multi-vitamin...It might be every six weeks.
https://www.facebook.com/2Rmag/posts/534227359949423

1999:
Lemond was confronted by statements from a Dutch doctor recently, who claimed Lemond had introduced the dangerous hormore EPO into the peloton. "******", he responds angrily. "I only took Vitamin B and C pills".
https://retro.nrc.nl/W2/Lab/Tour99/d150799.html

So Lemond, allegedly:
- no shots, just orally administered vitamins.
- never succumbed to the needle.
- absolute stance against any medications.

-------------------------------------

Reality check.

I'd take salbutamol myself

1989: After a few [iron] injections, he started to make a remarkable recovery.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1990/06/29/lemonds-self-made-miracle/eb9b3fe2-ee74-4b6d-9d65-b26484c27c14/

1991: LeMond was forced to drop out of the Tour of Italy in June because he was suffering from fatigue. His father-in-law, Dave Morris, an immunologist, said the cause was never determined, but LeMond was getting regular blood tests.
LeMond's lawyer, Nathan Jenkins, said the blood disorder was being treated with shots.

1991: Indeed, antibiotics helped tide LeMond through the three flat stages before the Alps.
http://www.si.com/vault/1991/08/05/124658/tour-de-courage-greg-lemond-fought-sickness-and-adversity-in-the-78th-tour-de-france-and-finished-a-hero-though-not-a-winner

1993: Allergist David Morris, LeMond's father-in-law, said Greg is being treated with flu vaccine injections that help improve his immune system. http://articles.latimes.com/1993-07-03/sports/sp-9645_1_greg-lemond

 

[Semper Fidelis]

Giant red flag when someone gets "B-12" or "Iron shots". Just ask fat head himself Barry Bonds.

 

[Escarabajo]

Oh dear!

Here we go again.

Now the reference is Fignon's book

Based on that all Colombian's cyclists were on coke!

 

[sniper]

Re:

the comments you read up-thread from Nijs. ""Lemond do not want to use drugs. He is stubborn and always just rely only on his own production."

I would take that quote with a pinch of salt.

Paul Nijs was a pharmacist who sold dope to riders. He worked with Freddy Maertens who had a most remarkeble comeback in 1981. Maertens stopped working with him because he felt like being a guinea pig.


Why did Lemond choose to work with this guy?

good question.

I believe Freddy's official story (e.g. in his biography) is that Nijs provided him with a variety of natural products.

Freddy's brother Marc tested positve three times in 1983 (2x) and 1987, but I'm not sure if there is a link to Nijs.
http://www.dopeology.org/people/Marc_Maertens/

 

[sniper]

Re: Re:

Not just his brother it seems.
Freddy himself got caught with his hands in the cookie jar a couple of times according to his Wiki:

[Freddy] Maertens was caught in drugs tests. He was first found positive after Professor Michel Debackere perfected a test in 1974 for pemoline, a drug in the amphetamine family that riders believed to be undetectable.[22]

He was disqualified in the Flèche Wallonne of 1977 and found guilty the same year in the Tour de France, the Tour of Belgium and the Tour of Flanders. He also had a positive finding for cortisone in 1986.[23]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freddy_Maertens

And soccer player Gille Van Binst recently alleged he had used drugs once in his carreer and that the dope was provided to him by Freddy Maertens.
http://www.nieuwsblad.be/cnt/dmf20160406_02222238

According to this site Paul Nijs "provided Freddy with products" (no further specifications):
http://zoeken.beeldengeluid.nl/internet/index.aspx?chapterid=1164&filterid=974&contentid=7&searchID=3471430&columnorderid=-1&orderby=1&itemsOnPage=10&defsortcol=12&defsortby=2&pvname=personen&pis=expressies;selecties&startrow=1&resultitemid=1&nrofresults=1&verityID=/10775/10775/241053/14400@expressies

 

[sniper]

A possible parallel between Thevenet, Lemond and Maertens?

Maertens:

[After his comeback in 1981] it was actually finished with the sprinting cannon. He did paddle along another six years, but he didn't finish most races, dropped out many times, and hardly won anything. "Used too much doping", specialists presumed. Maertens himself said it was due to a lack of motivation (...)
http://www.touretappe.nl/tour-de-france-historisch/helden-van-de-tour-freddy-maertens-leven-als-een-klimkoers/

The doping rumors surrounding Maertens were multiple. Like always in cycling, proving it is difficult.
His above mentioned broken wrist cured terribly slowly. Much slower than you'd expect at a rider of his age. Specialists quite generally attributed this phenomenon to excessive use of doping.
http://www.sportgeschiedenis.nl/2008/02/12/het-mysterie-freddy-maertens.aspx

Thevenet:

His 1978 season was a shadow of his years of winning the Tour de France. He had trouble finishing even minor races. When a journalist at the radio station France Inter wondered aloud if Thévenet's repeated poor performances might be due to doping, Thévenet and his team-mates refused to talk to the station.[15]

Thévenet went to hospital, where tests showed serious trouble with his adrenal glands. He admitted taking steroids
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Th%C3%A9venet

Lemond:

there was a time when I was too sick to race at one point, I was really having health issues, I couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t competing (...). Cees Beers called up Massimo Testa and, this what the [Beers] told me, and [Testa told him] ‘Greg took too many drugs.’
http://www.velonews.com/2014/09/news/storm-exclusive-interview-greg-lemond_347148#mHHwJrwPV3pWrH8X.99

 

[Semper Fidelis]

Here we go again with these fanboys playing off each other. and trolling each other as I pointed out before.

 

[Tienus]

Paul Nijs wrote this book:
http://www.boek.be/boek/gezond-sporten-met-natuurlijke-doping

In sport is much interest for stimulants. On a large scale are food supplements, vitamins, minerals and other preparations swallowed. For better fitness and more endurance. But what's real and what you can swallow without any problems? The nandrolone affair with famous athletes like Frank de Boer and Edgar Davids is still fresh in the memory. Dr. Paul Nijs describing hundreds of non-prohibited natural resources that can be used safely athletes to perform better. With a lot of attention for sophisticated food and drink for athletes. Dr. Paul Nijs studied chemistry, pharmacy and pharmacology at the University of Leuven and the University of Pennsylvania and was editor of the Journal of Pharmaceutical Belgium for fifteen years. He is currently a lecturer in sports medicine at the University of Antwerp and member of the Flemish anti-doping commission. Dr. Nijs accompanies several athletes and sports teams, and is himself an avid practitioner of cycling. - An indispensable reference for anyone who is serious about sports - lots of useful information for trainers or coaches of athletes - tested in practice: dr. Nijs has coached many athletes and sports teams, including multiple Tour de France winner Greg LeMond - Clear written and accessible

 

[Tienus]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freddy_Maertens

Rumours intensified when Maertens' successes became erratic. He flew to the United States to see a doctor, to confirm that he had no drug problems. He and a medical advisers flew from Amsterdam to New York City on 25 May 1979 in a DC-10. Maertens mentioned to his colleague, Paul de Nijs, that one of the engines made an odd noise. The plane continued towards Chicago but crashed on take-off when an engine fell off, killing 279.

slightly different version of the story:
http://cyclopunk.blogspot.nl/2014/02/daily-cycling-facts-13022014.html

. Believed to be suffering from a mystery ailment, he travelled to the USA on the advice of his doctor Paul Nijs.

Why did Paul Nijs travel with Freddy to the USA if he was just providing herbal drinks?


http://leiden.courant.nu/issue/LD/1981-07-07/edition/0/page/10?query=Gezinnen&sort=relevance

De vlaming werkte aan het begin van het seizoen met de apotheker, tevens wielrentrainer, Paul Nijs aan zijn come-back. Als lid van de dopingcommisie van de Belgische wielerbond schreef Nijs Maertens een training voor volgens Oosteuropese schema's. Nijs maakte met Maertens ook een contract op, waarin de renner zich verplichte alleen de door hem voorgeschreven voeding, mineralen en vitamines te consumeren. Tijdens de ronde van Frankrijk werd bekend dat Maertens intussen met Nijs heeft gebroken. "Ik voelde me hoe langer hoe meer een proefkonijn"

The Flemish rider worked at the beginning of the season on his comeback with the pharmacist, also racing trainer, Paul Nijs. As a member of the doping commission of the Belgian Cycling Federation Nijs wrote a training for Maertens according to Eastern European schemes. Nijs made Maertens sign a contract in which the rider is required only to consume the food, minerals and vitamins prescribed by him. During the Tour de France it was announced that Maertens has broken with Nijs. "I felt more and more like a guinea pig"

 

[gillan1969]

it's a slam dunk

he got ill...dopers get ill ergo he is a doper

love it

 

[sniper]

Description of Straw Man

The Straw Man fallacy is committed when a person simply ignores a person's actual position and substitutes a distorted, exaggerated or misrepresented version of that position.

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/straw-man.html

Thanks for providing another precious case in point, Gillan1976.

 

[sniper]

Re:

....
As a member of the doping commission of the Belgian Cycling Federation Nijs wrote a training for Maertens according to Eastern European schemes. Nijs made Maertens sign a contract in which the rider is required only to consume the food, minerals and vitamins prescribed by him. During the Tour de France it was announced that Maertens has broken with Nijs. "I felt more and more like a guinea pig"

Interesting.

So we have Nijs (a) providing Freddy Maertens with "Eastern European" training schemes in 1981 and (b) providing amphetamines to certain riders up to at least 1984.
Indeed, it raises the question why Lemond worked with him in 1989.


Here's Lemond in 2014 having diner with Freddy Maertens, multiple caught doper, for old times' sake I guess:

Greg LeMond Verifizierter Account
‏@GregLemond

Greg and Freddy Maertens at dinner last night in Belgium. http://ow.ly/i/6b60g

 

[sniper]

touche, and credit where it's due, you have perfected the art.
as Red said upthread, "rather telling".

 

[sniper]

If you have time, could you, or anyone who has Fignon's book, give us doubters the relevant quote from his book about Lemond? Would love to read it.

Yeah, good idea. Consult the person on Earth who hated LeMond the most to get reliable information on LeMond.

Good thinking, there.

I'm not sure what you mean here.
I thought Fignon spoke in favor of Lemond. Now you're saying we shouldn't believe Fignon?

 

[sniper]

It was rumored about in a Dutch newspaper and by the likes of Floyd Landis, Rudy Dhaenens (who indeed rode with Lemond) and Michael Boogerd (someone not exactly known for spilling beans on others).

If you were honest in your logic, you would at least acknowledge that said rumors most likely came out from :
a/ex-dopers jealous of a rider that has x10 their best performances
b/Said rumors most likely came from dope enablers, i/e people trying to have the riders you're talking about to dope in the first place. "Take it, that's what LeMond takes".
And since their doping got them nowhere near Greg ended up, please refer to a/ again.

I appreciate that at least you're not discarding the rumor as nonsense or as the words of "a guy who died 20 years ago". So you're acknolwedging the rumor's existence, props for that.

As for your rebuttal,
Whilst I cannot discard what you say, I'm surprised you present it as "(most) likely".
Did you ever speak to any of these guys? If not, why the confidence that they are/were all bitter jealous exdopers trying to spread a false rumor? It would be quite the conspiracy, whereas I thought you didn't believe in conspiracies.
In any case, I'd be more cautious.

Also, where does Testa fit in?
Why didn't he say "take it, that's what Hinault takes". Or "take it, that's what Indurain takes"?
Why Lemond? And to whom did he say that anyway? Did he say that to his pupil Andy Hampsten?
That would be weird because I thought Hampsten was clean, too?
If he didn't say it to Hampsten, then to whom did he say it? And why not to Hampsten?

Other thing is that Boogerd never spilled any beans on anybody.
He's not exactly the jealous type that would just smear people out of bitterness about his own results.
I'm quite confident he doesn't fit your description (a).

I'm just saying, in order to make your conspiracy theory work, you have to make so many speculative assumptions about people's motivations...i'd be (much) more cautious there and it's certainly not "(most) likely".

 

[sniper]

And to add to that, I'd like to ask you:
Is there a precedent of cyclists spreading *false* rumors about other cyclists because they are bitter and jealous?

I mean, of course I think it's fair to say that Floyd, Jaksche, and Rasmussen decided to spill the beans out of some sort of bitterness, but they hardly spilled any *false* rumors, did they?

We do have precedent for something else: omerta viz. don't spit in the soup.
In fact, we have ample documentation of that phenomenon, and tbh it goes directly counter to your conspiracy theory. Rather, I would argue:

Other things equal: procyclists (or enablers like Testa) have no motivation to spill beans in the first place, and they have even less motivation to spill *false* beans.

It means that, in those rare cases that beans are actually spilled (or rumors spread), there is more likely than not some kind of truth to those beans/rumors.

 

[@NL_LeMondFans]

If you have time, could you, or anyone who has Fignon's book, give us doubters the relevant quote from his book about Lemond? Would love to read it.

Yeah, good idea. Consult the person on Earth who hated LeMond the most to get reliable information on LeMond.

Good thinking, there.

I'm not sure what you mean here.
I thought Fignon spoke in favor of Lemond. Now you're saying we shouldn't believe Fignon?

Everything any athlete says in an autobiography has to be taken with a pinch of salt. It's true of Hinault, it's true of Fignon. Greg LeMond has yet to write one. Writing your own book and answering questions in an interview is very different. When writing a book, every author has an agenda. It is the piece of information that will stick. Hence they are very conservative about it. But not in terms of fact checking. For it is also the last chance for an athlete to interpret historical facts at their own advantage, omit stuff, etc... For example, explaining his positive in 89, Fignon explains he lacked courage to go train after his defeat at the Tour, etc... But it requires 1/having the stuff handy and 2/knowing what stuff you should take. Fignon downplays his doping, even when he admits to it.

Facing the media, Fignon tried to maintain a cool, fair play profile. But in truth he absolutely hated Greg. Someone told me once he never referred to him by his name but by nicknames.

 

[@NL_LeMondFans]

It was rumored about in a Dutch newspaper and by the likes of Floyd Landis, Rudy Dhaenens (who indeed rode with Lemond) and Michael Boogerd (someone not exactly known for spilling beans on others).

If you were honest in your logic, you would at least acknowledge that said rumors most likely came out from :
a/ex-dopers jealous of a rider that has x10 their best performances
b/Said rumors most likely came from dope enablers, i/e people trying to have the riders you're talking about to dope in the first place. "Take it, that's what LeMond takes".
And since their doping got them nowhere near Greg ended up, please refer to a/ again.

I appreciate that at least you're not discarding the rumor as nonsense or as the words of "a guy who died 20 years ago". So you're acknolwedging the rumor's existence, props for that.

As for your rebuttal,
Whilst I cannot discard what you say, I'm surprised you present it as "(most) likely".
Did you ever speak to any of these guys? If not, why the confidence that they are/were all bitter jealous exdopers trying to spread a false rumor? It would be quite the conspiracy, whereas I thought you didn't believe in conspiracies.
In any case, I'd be more cautious.

Also, where does Testa fit in?
Why didn't he say "take it, that's what Hinault takes". Or "take it, that's what Indurain takes"?
Why Lemond? And to whom did he say that anyway? Did he say that to his pupil Andy Hampsten?
That would be weird because I thought Hampsten was clean, too?
If he didn't say it to Hampsten, then to whom did he say it? And why not to Hampsten?

Other thing is that Boogerd never spilled any beans on anybody.
He's not exactly the jealous type that would just smear people out of bitterness about his own results.
I'm quite confident he doesn't fit your description (a).

I'm just saying, in order to make your conspiracy theory work, you have to make so many speculative assumptions about people's motivations...i'd be (much) more cautious there and it's certainly not "(most) likely".

A conspiracy theory is an elaborate plan to harm someone. I don't claim there was such a thing.

It's all in the context :

1/Greg was the superstar of the 80's and the best paid rider. That's more than enough to explain the jealousy, especially if you link it with Greg's choice to focus on the summer races : Tour and Worlds. If you weren't around, i'll give you an idea : if you read the french press in the 80's, up until 1984, Greg is seen as the next Hinault, a natural boy wonder, everybody loves him : journalists, his peers, everyone. From the moment Greg signs the "million dollar contract" at La Vie Claire, rumour starts to spread that he is lazy, not training, not paying attention to his diet, etc... and it gets worse when he fails to win races between his world champion title in 83 and his first Tour in 86. The general consensus is that most riders are doing more effort than Greg but they're not paid as much. It's only much later that most cyclists will reckon that Greg made all salaries go up in the business. Much later.

2/If you take into account 1/ then naming Greg as an incentive for others to dope just makes sense. Most people on earth think every cyclist is a doper. Again, from a french perspective, Greg's cleanliness was not a subject. In reality, no one was paying that much attention to it. He just had a better reputation than others. No one really cared, from my point of view. It was different times. I think that, before EPO, performances in cycling were "suspicious", but not defined by dope. Today they are. People crack jokes about it. But at the time ? Not so much.

3/I heard the rumour "he can't compete because too much dope" way before Greg. It was already said of Anquetil and Merckx, to name just 2. that rumour was so widespread that it lead Hinault to stop at 32. I have interviews of Hinault in his mid twenties, saying : "I'll stop on november 14, 1986". He was scared of turning 32 and not being as strong as he once was. Because he took the same stuff ? I'll let you interpret as you wish.