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Who have been the clean winners over the years?

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If one is talking about the history of doping, I suppose one would have to go back to the Roman amphitheater combats. Another part of Western Civ. which we owe to those ancient Romans, i.e. spectacle games and thus sport. Though one can only imagine what gladiators were given to "enhance" resistence, tollarate pain and increase courage. In any case looking to gain an edge begins here no doubt. In the modern era, and in terms of cycling (but also olympic sports), it pretty much hase gone like this: amphetamines since at least the 30's (one thinks of German athletes and Nazi propaganda - yes, the olympic games have always been above all about national propaganda: from Berlin to Moscow, LA and Bejing), then following the 1968 games at Mexico City homologous blood transfusions, also from the late 60's and 70's anabolic steriods, to synthetic testosterone in the 80's, to EPO in the early to mid 90's and its various generational forms like CERA of today as well as hormones like TGH (BALCO case), etc. Given this unseen and forbiden culture in sport, and it is cultural, I doubt there has been hardly a winner of a cycling Grand Tour (or olympic gold medalist) who has been absolutely clean in the "on bread and water sense" since the starting point of this doping scenario. Perhaps I'm just too cynical, but all the evidence (and there are mountains of it) makes it impossible for me to think otherwise.
 
Apr 9, 2009
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So the a & b samples was positive in -99?

No..?Suprise,suprise:D


Was this latest "french scandal" some kind of positive dopingtest for Lance?

No..?Suprise,suprise:D


You knobheads had tried to get him for almost 10 years in trouble without anykind of success.

Dont you have anykind of idea why he has not given any positive dopingtests EVER?

Think about that!
 
Alpe d'Huez said:
What do you mean by "winners...over the years"? All of history? And I assume you mean completely clean their entire career. ........
Ah well, use your discretion, I guess.....as you did. Thanks. :) I suppose I mean the 'major' races, or what you may consider such, like (obviously) the Grand Tours, the World Champs, the major Classics, maybe TDF stages, etc. Take your pic. And as far as the time frame goes.....I dunno..... say, since the '50s, maybe?

Some may call me naive, but I also really like (and want) to believe LeMond was clean. I mean, I (and this isn't the total reason for my 'convictions') don't think he would whine and moan so much about diry riders if he wasn't clean. Also, he was obviously a freak of a talent. Some of his exploits as a junoir were telling.



What about Hinault?
 
golancego said:
So the a & b samples was positive in -99?

No..?Suprise,suprise:D


Was this latest "french scandal" some kind of positive dopingtest for Lance?

No..?Suprise,suprise:D


You knobheads had tried to get him for almost 10 years in trouble without anykind of success.

Dont you have anykind of idea why he has not given any positive dopingtests EVER?

Think about that!

No the real knobheads are those who assume that the controls always work and that effective confounding methods don't exist and have never been used by cyclists before....that's what's up yo!
 
Alpe d'Huez said:
Giles Delion was very health conscious and refused to dope in the 1990s as well. Willy Voet apologized to him and said if everyone were clean, Delion would have won the Tour. He won the Maillot Blanc in 1991. His career ended about three years later when he couldn't keep up with the peloton anymore and he was forced to retire, at the age of 27.

Nice call. His Tour stage 7 win in 92 is a textbook example of how to win a bike race and what pure class looks like. It's a fuxing tragedy what happened to his career. van Hooydonck too.

I'll add Steve Bauer to the list of clean champions and another star that suddenly went into the gutter in 91.

What's telling is out of the hundreds if not thousands of pros that rode in the 90s, you can count on one hand the number of guys who you're confident in saying were clean.
 
Apr 1, 2009
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All those saying LA never doped cause he never got caught:confused:
Supertalented Jan Ullrich and Ivan Basso both doped (nobody really believes in the whole attempted doping farce), and LA beat them each time:confused:
The guy is human, not superhuman.
When you have two very talented cyclists, and one of them is on EPO, there is NO WAY the guy who isn't doping can beat the doped guy on anything approaching a serious climb.
All the big champions doped, we just cannot prove it for all of them.

Like many of you, I would like to believe that at least LeMond was clean, but the last 12 years have turned me into a cynic. :(
 
Mar 10, 2009
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I think O'Grady is probably clean. Rode with CA a good while too. But that's just a guess. I can't ever be sure of any cyclist. Some of the pro peloton's secrets will always stay secret.

So, I just try to enjoy the sport as it is, however it is. Good and bad, Doped and clean. It's not my job to clean up their sport.

The personalities, on the other hand, make it difficult to love many cyclists. Even if Evans is clean, I can't stand his personality or his public persona. Armstrong either.
 
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tifosa said:
Even if Evans is clean, I can't stand his personality or his public persona. .

ditto...

weather was lovely in paris last year till cadel came up the champs elysees then a big miserable black cloud appeared... i think they should relax the doping rules for him and allow him some uppers or summat to cheer the miserable so-an-so up..
 
Apr 1, 2009
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I´ve got to admit that I can´think of one single name. A bit sad- would be nice to have a Captain Clean somewhere to prove it can be done.
 
What about Hinault?
Unlikely. It's pretty well assumed he had a few cortisone shots during his years. Having said that, I don't think Hinault was a big time doper, at all. And as noted by others before, drugs in the 70's and 80's were about one one-hundredth as effective as EPO and other blood boosters that appeared in the early 90's, and easier to detect.

As to Evans, a friend of my calls him the Down Under Levi Leipheimer, or DULL for short. As he rarely rides at the front, never attacks, and has the personality of a rock.

Actually, that's kind of insulting to Levi as he has tried to ride at the front, he's just not very adept at quick accelerations in the hills. And Levi's tried to be a little more approachable in the last year.

Speaking of...while I think Levi's positive as a junior (overturned) was indicative of something, and he was on USPS when LA sought help from Ferrari, I'd like to think the guy is riding clean these days, and has been for a while. He's very health conscious, was one of the first riders to sign the UCI anti-doping charter, long before his team, his name hasn't been attached to anything scandals, and his gains have been slow and steady. He's pretty much the same guy he's been for years, sort of like Sastre, but just gotten a little better, while retirement and doping suspensions have weeded those performing above him out.
 
Alpe d'Huez said:
You're kidding, right? His gains were amazing between 1990 and 1991, and he was the "best" rider in the world during an era of mega doping and uninhibited EPO use. Plus he was a client to noted doping doctor Francesco Conconi.

Indurain is what first clued me into that something was seriously wrong with pro cycling. I had never even heard of EPO at the time. The exact moment was that time trial where he beat all the other contenders by four minutes. The closest was Armand de las Cuevas at three minutes. That combined with his climbing and with some other anomalies like Chiapucci made me realize that something was rotten.
 
Mar 19, 2009
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BroDeal said:
I think it is just being realistic. Can anyone point to a post-1990 GT win they think was clean? It has been one long joke.for going on twenty years now.

The best result in the Tour was probably Mottet in 1991...7' 37" behind Indurain.
 
Alpe d'Huez said:
You're kidding, right? His gains were amazing between 1990 and 1991, and he was the "best" rider in the world during an era of mega doping and uninhibited EPO use. Plus he was a client to noted doping doctor Francesco Conconi.
Yep, I agree (by the way, thanks for your relpy on Hinault). I loved Indy, but........not to mention other expamples, he smashed an amazing estimated average output during his hour record attempt in the early '90s (477 -- second only to Mercks, at 485: http://www.bikecult.com/bikecultbook/sports_recordsHour.html ); and Kimmage mentioned in the Velocity Nation interview than he amazingly 'occasionally' dropped pure climbers during the Tour.

And, as you say, he totally smashed most riders (exept, perhaps for Rominger) during a time when the relatively 'new' EPO was rampant.
 
Mar 19, 2009
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There is NO WAY that Merckx averaged 485 watts for an hour in 1972.

At sea level 50 km/hr is 465 watts range. At 7,350 feet he was doing 370 at the most.
 
Mar 19, 2009
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Epicycle said:
The best result in the Tour was probably Mottet in 1991...7' 37" behind Indurain.


Mottet was 49th in 1990, a whopping 1 hour 6 minutes and 57'' down on LeMond.

But "Ve have Vays" to improve.