He is at the WADA meetings and said that he decided to quit after realizing that everyone on his Cofids team was using EPO(he wasn’t?). So why didn’t he blow the whistle on the case of the sport then? because he needed the sport to launch his frame line? but now he has tons of money he can speak up because nothing will hurt him now.
Guys like him bother me because (like politicians) he never has a solution to the problem.
Uh oh… you may as well have posted that you love to ride your bike while using an iPod. The LeMond protection posse will hunt you down like the dog that you are… 
Lemond is a whiner. He has a medical condition, and yet he whines that suddenly “every one was faster than me, so they must all be on drugs”. Whatever. The guy just can’t acept that he couldn’t do it any more because of his motchondrial myopathy, and had to blame every one else.
I like LeMond and disagree with your spin.
Paul Huddle interviewed LeMond a few months ago on the Competitors Podcast. He gives a very different impression than you guys have descibed here. I highly recommend a listen.
For example, it is not the case that LeMond has not suggested solutions. He proposes penalties for teams and their directors, instead of just individual riders. He also proposes amnesty for riders who admit to use and provide information on other users.
He is not a whiner, but a great champion who has had the guts to take an unpopular position knowing that he will be attacked for it. He never said that because others were faster than him, they must be doing drugs. He said that the peleton was suddenly and inexplicably faster. He cites numbers-watts and average mph as prooof. Plus, does anyone here really disagree that the peleton is rife with PED use? Given that there is no serious dispute about the prevalence of PED use, I do not understand attacking people who have the guts to break the code of silence.
Why didn’t he make these claims in public when he retired? Why wait until a few years ago? Lemond is one of my cycling heroes, but everything he says and does smacks of jealousy and an insatiable desire to be the man of US cycling…no matter what it tales. As someone else pointed out, why does he blame doping for ending his career instead of his health issue…the real cause?
never heard the interview, just going off cyclingnews.com today.
what guts. guts would have been when he was racing or just getting ready to retire to bring it out. Not after making tons of money off the business of cycling and then come out and say something. what does he have to lose?
Also it was pretty prevalent in his day of blood doping, cocaine and other drugs. He says in cyclingnews that he new his team at Cofids were using. why didn’t he say anything then?
You are confusing me actually.
Greg Lemond retired in 1994. Cofidis started in 1996.
Lemond never rode for Cofidis. He finished his career with Z.
I read that wronng in the article, he was talking about
Eric Boyer from Cofidis.
sorry.
Plus, does anyone here really disagree that the peleton is rife with PED use? Given that there is no serious dispute about the prevalence of PED use, I do not understand attacking people who have the guts to break the code of silence.
The 89 race with Fenion (sp?) was a classic. Not just the finall TT, but the mountain stages where they just kept going at each other. Lemond was truly one of America’s( the world’s) great cyclists.
But I do agree with others that his timing is suspect. He did not break the code of silence when he was riding and taking advantage of what the sport had to offer (even in 91/92), only after retirement. And the volume of his claims seemed to get louder and louder as Lance broke his records for tour wins is also suspect.
“He never said that because others were faster than him, they must be doing drugs.”
Actually, in a ESPN special (don’t remember the name of the show… “Speed” something") he said exactly that.
Here is the link to the interview if you do want to listen to it.
http://www.competitorradio.com/shows/47Competitors-GregLeMond-08-22-06(1hr12min).mp3
…He never said that because others were faster than him, they must be doing drugs. He said that the peleton was suddenly and inexplicably faster. He cites numbers-watts and average mph as prooof…
Not that I like to defend Lance, but to the above argument doesn’t Lance point out that it’s Greg who has the long distance Tour de France TT speed record (some of it on cobbles). This seems to kinda blow a hole in Greg’s argument.
but the TT was downhill…(really)
.
That’s right, it was somewhat downhill, but it’s not like it was down a mountain, it was in
Paris, some of it along the Seine, some of it on cobbles, and it wasn’t
a straight line with a huge tailwind like some recent TTs either. It’s
almost impossible to compare one bike race course to the next, but
Lemond’s effort was fantastic, and has stood up for nearly 20 years
against the world’s best cyclists on peak form with better technology
on an assorted variety of fast courses. It just seems like Lemond’s
argument about the peloton getting faster doesn’t hold a lot of water.
thanks, I will.
First off I listened to the competitor show. The thing that I find disingenuous is that he points fingers at only the modern drug users. Cycling was loaded with drugs long before EPO, and not one word about that. It was just the PED’s of their time, and I have no doubt that Lemond took part there. They just were not as effective as modern day PED’s. You can go way back in cycling and find that the drugs of their time were abused. So I give him no props for calling modern day cyclists after his career cheaters, somehow implying that his generation were clean before EPO.
As for his tt mph, as Fracois said, it was downhill, and point to point, just like most TDF tt’s. I can’t believe that any of you out there give any credence to a point to point tt using mph, it’s blatantly ridiculous. You can compare the riders that ride it that day, but even then, there are several hour differences to take off times, and the course can change dramatically…34 mph on a loop or out and back is impossible right now. If you want to spout off mph records, then use the hour records set on velodromes…
It was a rather non-technical TT, with a net elevation loss, and was only 24 kms long, not 50 plus kms like most flattish TT’s in the Tour. Lemond no longer has that record, it now belongs to Dave Z.
The peloton has gotten faster. You can clearly see that from the average speeds, especially in the mountains.
What really confuses me about Greg Lemond is that nobody ever seems to remember the “iron injections” he received during and after the 89 Giro that seemed to turn his season around so dramatically. If any of today’s rider were ever to make a claim like this I don’t think anyone would ever believe that they were telling the truth.
He never said that because others were faster than him, they must be doing drugs. He said that the peleton was suddenly and inexplicably faster.
I’m not sure I really see the fine line being drawn, but he has said things that are right on this line.
The most interesting and distrubing comment I heard was about Lance. I’m not a Lance sycophant…and I’ve ALWAYS liked Lemond.
However, when he stated that Lance had to be cheating because nobody could come back from an illness like that and win the Tour after he HIMSELF had come back to win the Tour after being shot, nonetheless…well…that kinda stuff just doesn’t sit right with me.