From Lance to Landis: Inside the Lance Armstrong Doping Controversy

From Lance to Landis: Inside the American Doping Controversy at the Tour de France

For eight years, the Tour de France, arguably the world's most demanding athletic competition, was ruled by two men: Lance Armstrong and Floyd Landis. On the surface, they are a player featured in one of the great sporting stories of the age-American riders overcome tremendous odds to dominate a sport that held little previous interest for their countrymen. But is this a true story, or is there a darker version of the truth, which unfortunately reflects the reality of sport in the twenty-first century? Title Landis is now in jeopardy because drug tests revealing that his testosterone levels were eleven times those of a normal athlete strongly suggest that he was using drugs, and for years similar allegations have revolved around Armstrong.

Lance Armstrong Doping Controversy

From Lance to Landis: Inside the American Doping Controversy at the Tour de France
Now an internationally acclaimed award-winning journalist David Walsh gives an account of the explosion of the shadow side of professional sports. In the description of electrifying, controversial, and carefully documented, he explored many facets of the cyclist doping scandals in the United States and abroad. He researched how to improve the performance of the drug can penetrate major sporting events and why athletes succumb to the pressure to use them. In researching this book, Walsh did hundreds of hours of interviews with key figures in international cycling, doctors, and other insiders, including Emma O'Reilly, Armstrong's old massage therapist, a former U.S. Postal Service cycling team doctor Prentice Steffen, cycling legend Greg LeMond, and former teammates both Landis and Armstrong.

Central to the story of Lance Armstrong's relentless, all-consuming drive to be the best. Also important to the story is Floyd Landis, a hero, modest sympathetic is the first winner of the Tour de France after Lance-and the first to face the threat of having his title revoked. More than anything else, this book will light up again the debate about whether there is room in the current sports culture for athletes who compete honestly, whether sports can be saved from the widening scandal like this, and what changes should be made.


Midway through the third stage of Tour de France 1924, Henri Pelissier (winner of the Tour 1923) abandoned. Journalist Albert Londres found him drinking hot chocolate at the restaurant train station. Interview Pelissier gave still important. After explaining what had happened to the drivers suffering he showed Londres the various concoctions of pills he took to both improve performance and reduce suffering. "We walked in the dynamite," he said.

Over the years the type of dynamite has changed. In 1930 chemists synthesized amphetamines and racers soon find out how they can help and harm. Tom Simpson died in 1967 from the effects of dehydration, diarrhea and amphetamine overdose.

In the 1970s, the excessive use of corticoids nearly killed 2 times Tour winner Bernard Thevenet. When he went public with his guilt, explaining that he used steroids is the usual practice in the peloton, he received abuse from his sponsor, community and fellow riders.

In the 1990s the EPO made doping is necessary if the driver wants to win. Riders such as Marco Pantani and Bjarne Riis ran their hematocrits to 60% almost deadly. Every rider who wants to compete with these guys, and as they are forced to either stick a needle in their arm or retirement. It's not just my guess. Many racers of the era (Andy Hampsten, for one) has gone public with how the sport is altered by drugs that can dramatically improve a rider's power output.

Today, with a reliable test for EPO is available, drivers have to go to the new strategy, including old-fashioned blood doping. The best drivers can spend more than $ 100,000 a year on both the drug and the technical expertise to avoid detection. Because the technology is very expensive, generally only low-paid low-rider is caught by drug testing.

Which brings us to the book Walsh and demand that he found the "smoking gun" before his rate charges. The smoking gun is almost impossible to find. In 1960, the Tour de France doctor Pierre Dumas walked in on Gaston Nencini when he calmly kept his own blood transfusion in his hotel room. It will not happen today because of what Nencini do to win the Tour 1960 is not illegal. However, Nencini doping experts do what most think modern racers do, do autologous (using their own blood stored for later injection) blood doping.

I urge everyone concerned with the obvious problem of rampant doping in sport to read this book. Walsh is not a sensationalist. He is a man who hates cheaters. This book is the result of his belief that Lance Armstrong, like almost all the rest of the peloton professionals, who use banned improve performance modalities. By necessity, he must build depth case, but that should not be a justification to reject the conclusions of the hand. I finished the book that has the feeling Walsh did make his case.

A pro, old Italian retired with close connections to the rider of the day once sat me down and explained a lot about doping. He concluded by saying, "Bill, they're all dirty."

I would like Walsh to organize his information a little better. However, that does not make this book not curled hair on the back of my neck. Even people who truly believe in guilt Armstrong will learn a lot about the modern professional cycling this book.

-Bill McGann, author Story of the Tour de France

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