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Tour de France

Is ‘technological fraud’ a real threat at the tour de france, the uci x-rays the stage-winner and yellow jersey bikes every day..

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How serious is the threat of “technological fraud” in the Tour de France? And what is the UCI doing to try to keep the genie in the bottle?

Velo queried several Tour riders and team officials across the peloton as well as spoke to the UCI officials in charge of the controls.

Also read : The UCI claims it controlled 700 bikes during the Tour de France

The UCI conducts dozens of daily X-rays and scans across the peloton every day.

“To be honest, I am in the bunch, and I don’t think it’s happening,” Caleb Ewan told Velo before he left the Tour.  “It’s true, the guys are flying,  but it’s down to bikes are faster, knowledge and training improves, and it’s normal that the sport evolves every year, everyone gets better and better. It’s human evolution.”

Following UCI protocols, bikes are X-rayed every day from the yellow jersey, along with the bikes of all the stage-winners, jersey-holders, and other random riders.

The UCI expressed confidence its controls are sending out the right message.

“I think it’s very difficult,” UCI’s Michael Rogers, who heads up the UCI’s efforts to combat technological fraud, told Velo . “We also need to think of the other side. It’s an extreme risk,  and the risk/benefit ratio is out of whack, but we need to stay present.”

Staying present — that’s what the UCI insists it’s doing with its staff of three or four officials who ply the peloton every day.

They scan dozens of bikes each morning with a hand-held device that can detect magnets. Another mobile, hand-held X-ray device was introduced this year to complement the UCI’s finish-line X-ray system.

They’re looking for motors, batteries, cables, or any large, dense mass that otherwise is not part of a modern-day carbon-fiber bike build.

So far in the 2023 Tour, there’s been no evidence of technological fraud in the peloton. In fact, there’s never been since the UCI rolled out its high-profile X-ray program nearly five years ago .

There have been hints of hidden motors for years, however, with rumors of major one-day monuments and even grand tour performances clouded in suspicion. YouTube is full of videos describing how they can be used.

Oddly spinning wheels, random wheel changes, and sudden accelerations following strange hand movements on handlebars were tell tale signs, but nothing was ever rooted out.

In 2016, a Belgian rider was caught with a motor-assisted bike during a cyclocross race. There were rumors of a rider using a motor-assisted bike last year in one of Italy’s top gran fondos .

Sensing the sport’s credibility was in question, the UCI’s redoubled its efforts to stop would-be cheats. The cycling governing began using a thermal-heat sensor and then rolled out a mobile X-ray facility.

With the improved technology of electric bikes, however, many insist the technology already exists to hide and mask motors in today’s racing bikes that are already laden with batteries for electronic shifting.

But would someone dare use it in the Tour de France?

“In the pro ranks, I would be surprised. I don’t think it’s a real issue,” Ag2r-Citroën’s Oliver Naesen told Velo . “Every day in the race communiqué we see the bikes that are scanned, and they all come back negative. I have never read anything of anybody having any anything illegal on the bike.

“On this bike, there is a big battery in the seat post for the derailleurs. There is electricity in the shifters for the derailleurs, but motors and engines? Not as far as I know of.”

“Personally I don’t think it’s happening. I am an optimist. It’s the same with doping, I think the sport’s quite clean,” Israel-Premier Tech’s Michael Woods told Velo . “I wouldn’t be surprised if it happened in the past, but for it to be happening today, I don’t know.

“I won the other day [Puy de Dôme] and I didn’t have a motor in my bike,” Woods said. “The fans and the pundits are going to speculate, but that’s part of sport.”

Could someone use some sort of motorized assistance, not to necessarily go faster, but to ride easier across the stage to stay fresh for a key acceleration?

Or what about swapping out bikes during a stage, and riding a “clean” bike to the line where the X-ray crews are waiting?

Rogers insisted the UCI is keeping a sharp eye on the bikes raced on during each stage at the Tour.

Rogers told Velo that the team of UCI officials working the Tour this month are especially vigilant for any sort of suspicious performances, oddly timed bike changes, and frequent changes of wheels or other equipment.

“It’s quite a broad program. We have people tagging bikes after the race for X-rays,” Rogers told Velo . “We work closely with VAR [ed – instant replay], with watching video for suspicious kind of activity, bike changes, wheels changes, and we’ll keep track of those.”

Bikes can also be dismantled in what would be the ultimate control.

In the 2020 Tour, Jumbo-Visma’s top sport director was kicked out of the race after arguing with a UCI technician who insisted on taking apart Primož Roglič’s bike atop the Col de la Loze stage.

There was no motorized assistance found, but team officials were enraged after they said the UCI technician damaged the crankset.

Some pros believe that the UCI’s controls should be doing more.

Benoît Cosnefroy of Ag2r-Citroën told journalist James Startt that he doesn’t think the UCI controls are enough.

“I don’t know if there is any mechanical doping, but it’s possible in my opinion, and for me it’s a real problem because there is not a real fight against this,” Cosnefroy said. “It’s a question of credibility for our sport. It’s not like doping, where it is in your system and they can keep a flask and test it again some time in the future.

“With mechanical doping, there is no trace of it,” he said. “The bike is taken away and if something is wrong, there is no possible trace of it. For me the UCI is not doing enough.”

Rogers of the UCI insists the cycling federation is staying on top of the game.

“It’s important that we stay present and we keep up with technology,” Rogers told Velo . “We keep current, and we make sure we protect the integrity of the sport. The public are asking that, and there have been a lot of rumors in the past.

“We have to protect the riders by saying we check these things, and to send a message to the general public that the results are of full integrity.”

And what would happen if a stage winner at the Tour would be caught with a motor inside their bike?

“That would be really shocking, to be honest,” Naesen said. “They would go to prison.”

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Doping Cloud Still Looms Over a Thrilling Tour de France

By Michael Powell

• July 26, 2019

BRIANÇON, France — To watch the cyclists of the Tour de France assault the high Alps, those grand geologic up-thrusts of granite and limestone, to see men pedal through misting meadows and up brutal switchbacks is to thrill at feats of athleticism.

As the Tour headed toward its finale in Paris on Sunday, there were so many complex strategies and stories in the race’s final days: Would the ebullient young Julian Alaphilippe of Deceuninck Quick-Step regain the yellow jersey to become the first Frenchman to claim the title of champion in three decades? Would he fall to the high-altitude guy from Colombia, Egan Bernal of Team Ineos (the New York Yankees of cycling), or the Dutchman Steven Kruijswijk of Jumbo-Visma?

As I watched, however, another question nagged: Is all of this real?

Are these stars drawing on deep reserves within or are they helped along by a chemical new or old? When announcers exclaim that a rider pedals “like the Hulk” or describe Alaphilippe’s performance as “absolutely extraordinary,” it seems wise to temper the urge to clap unreservedly.

This sport was nearly consumed by doping. In the 1980s and 1990s and deep into this century, one champion after another fell away: Marco Pantani, Alberto Contador and Lance Armstrong, who was barred for life and stripped of seven Tour de France titles.

This much can be safely said: Cycling today is far cleaner than before. Testing has improved by great leaps and athletes have their blood tested out of season, as well. This is essential for any half-serious testing program. As fewer champions perform in ways that make them appear as a separate species, rival cyclists perhaps no longer feel it necessary to illegally pump EPO into their veins, which increases the capacity of the blood to carry oxygen.

That said, cycling certainly is not altogether clean. In March, the German police found a skier tethered to a blood bag and the investigation led two Austrian cyclists to confess to doping. They hailed from prominent teams competing in this year’s Tour de France.

“Are we catching every cyclist who dopes? No,” says Jonathan Vaughters, manager of the EF Education First cycling team, and author of “One-Way Ticket,” a forthcoming book that examines cycling’s dirty history and his own doping. “But we are leaps and bounds better than two decades ago.”

I placed a call to the South African Ross Tucker, an internationally renowned exercise physiologist and founder of the website The Science of Sport . He has tracked doping and performance and notes that in the wake of multiple scandals, cycling times declined. Of late, however, those times have edged back up.

Cycling has embraced the biological passport, which profiles athletes’ individual blood values, so there is a baseline that their tests can be compared with. That has dialed back but not stopped doping. A cyclist might still try to micro-dose — take small doses of drugs that are difficult to detect — right up to the line.

“The breadth in which you can safely dope has greatly narrowed and that has constrained use,” Tucker said. “What we don’t know are the unknown unknowns. Are there new drugs, new ways?”

Ominously to the view of antidoping scientists, neither of the Austrian cyclists caught in that police investigation had tested positive.

Marc Madiot, director of the team Groupama-FDJ, employed one of those cyclists and he made a fine show of indignation. “Trust was betrayed,” he proclaimed. “That’s one of the hazards in life.”

That’s true about life. It’s also true that Madiot raced in the bad old days of doping and was questioned intensively by the police and was nearly brought to ground in a big cycling doping scandal in 1998.

Now I need to back off a few steps. Cycling may be the original fallen angel of doping — competitive cyclists in the 1880s allegedly pedaled fueled by a stew of cocaine and caffeine — but it arguably has a notably tougher testing regimen than many American sports, including baseball.

And many in Major League Baseball’s establishment hailed from a no less dirty rotten steroid era. Tony La Russa, now a vice president with the Boston Red Sox, was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2014 for his work as a manager. His teams, notably the Oakland Athletics, were great beneficiaries of baseball’s steroid age and he adamantly defended such obvious dopers as Mark McGwire.

Nor did the baseball press cover itself in glory. A house was on fire and too many reporters sounded like fan boys rather than run for a bucket of water.

Let’s return to cycling. The persistence of its doping problems owes to the fact that the sport is about power and endurance. As another fallen champion cyclist, Tyler Hamilton, noted in his own tell-all book, “The Secret Race,” racing at the highest level is about the ability to endure pain while producing energy across hours of effort and at high altitudes.

In all of that, he noted, blood doping was — and still can be — a great force multiplier.

Of late, the look of professional cyclists has changed and that has stirred concern. Where in the 1990s cyclists like Armstrong looked muscular and fierce, today cyclists look lean to the point of emaciation. Much speculation centers on an unapproved drug, AICAR, which helps an athlete lose weight without losing muscle mass.

Tucker equates the effect of that drug to car design. You can, he noted, make a bigger and more powerful engine, and that happened in the 1990s. Or you can keep the engine the same size and cut the mass of the car.

“AICAR offers a way to cut weight without impacting performance,” he noted.

There is finally a conundrum that confronts all who would keep doping out of professional sports: The distance between the cup of suspicion and the lip of drop-dead proof is great.

“In order to trigger a sanction, you have to have been 99.9 percent likely doped,” Tucker said. “Obviously many fall short. They are highly suspicious but not enough to sanction.”

So fish slip through the net and maybe we’re the better for that. Better to let 99 walk free than to jail one innocent. It does however feed that nagging suspicion that hangs over all sports in this era — the explanation for extraordinary accomplishment might prove more complicated than it appears.

An earlier version of this column misspelled a part of the name of the cycling team that is directed by Marc Madiot. It is Groupama-FDJ, not Goupama. The column also misstated the year of a widespread cycling doping scandal in which Madiot was questioned by the police. It was 1998, not 1999.

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Tour de France’s doping history clouds a ‘cleaner’ sport

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With the start of the 101st Tour de France only one day away, the topic of doping in cycling will no doubt start to rear its ugly head. While the riders cover 3,664km in 21 stages over three weeks in an extraordinary feat of human endurance, the aftershocks of the Lance Armstrong affair continue to colour our approach to the event and its champions.

Armstrong was meant to be the saviour of modern day cycling as it sought to recover from the Festina scandal of 1998 . He was credited with an intense attention to detail and dedicated scientific approach to his preparation; his cycling team was revered for a scientific and systematic approach to training and racing. Both parties were seen as having “too much to lose” to be caught up in the doping scandals that surrounded the sport during the late 1990s and early 2000s. Unfortunately as we now know, this was not the case.

So where does this leave the current crop of cyclists as they push out on the start from the start line of this year’s Tour? Even the most cynical of us hope that the riders are clean, or at least cleaner than the previous decades. The anti-doping debate is also testament to the hope that people involved in the sport want change, and want to believe that professional cycling has cleaned up its act.

Media, sponsor and fan pressure is starting to force teams to take a “zero tolerance” stance on doping, and is undoubtedly behind the decision of Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) President, Brian Cookson, to create the Cycling Independent Reform Commission (CIRC) . Cookson’s actions have won many admirers including International Olympic Committee President, Thomas Bach, who said he was “impressed” with the UCI’s efforts to stamp out doping in the sport.

Change on the horizon?

But is the attitude towards doping in cycling actually changing in the peloton itself? It is difficult to say for certain. Thanks to the history of the sport there will always be scepticism about whether riders are clean. It is unfortunate, but inevitable, that riders and teams who carry the yellow jersey that has been stained by years of doping and cheating, will be questioned. It was no great surprise that many in the sport viewed Chris Froome and Team Sky’s dominance at last year’s Tour with a level of suspicion.

The introduction of the biological passport for athletes in 2008 appears to have had an effect on athlete behavior and attitudes towards doping in the sport. The biological passport monitors certain parameters of a cyclist’s blood over time, making it more difficult for them to dope without detection. The passport does not test for specific banned substances, rather for the manipulation of blood parameters that suggest doping has occurred. Encouragingly, the biological passport has stood up to legal challenges . But it will take more evidence to show that the biological passport provides a long-term deterrent to doping within the sport.

So, why is doping such a big issue in cycling and other endurance-based sports? Well it improves performance, quite significantly, and in some cases by as much as 6% according to research work by Yannis Pitsiladis. Therefore, assuming that professional cycling is cleaning up its act, the Tour should be significantly slower than the 1990s and 2000s. This can be tracked as the Tour often visits the same routes and mountains year on year, affording historical comparisons.

Sports scientists such as Ross Tucker from South Africa have performed these comparisons, which demonstrate that from 2009, the average performance speed and power outputs of top tour riders fell by 5-10%. This is apparent from the fact that the tour winners of 2010 to 2012 being barely able to make the top ten in tours from the 1990s and 2000s.

Cycling power output carries with it some important physiological implications because the cyclist/bicycle system is “closed”: physiological power can be directly measured as mechanical power by a power meter on the bike. Therefore it is possible to estimate, with a few assumptions, what kind of physiology determines a given output. The performances of some riders in the Armstrong era were such that it is hard to believe they were the result of the “normal” training processes, however gifted they were.

In time, technological, training and nutritional advances might slowly narrow the gap between recent performances and those of the 1990s and 2000s. Last year Chris Froome’s ascent of the main mountain stages (Ax-3-Domaines and Mont Ventoux) matched the level of performance seen in the Armstrong era.

Speculation and accusation

Unsurprisingly following Froome’s performance in the mountains fingers started to be pointed at both him and Team Sky. Following a period of concerted pressure from the media, Sky eventually released Froome’s power data for “expert” review. Dave Brailsford, Team Sky Principal, suggested that their reluctance to release Froome’s data was due to the actions of “pseudo scientists” who misinterpret power output data either inadvertently, or deliberately, to make it say more or less what they want.

In some respect Brailsford is absolutely correct, there are many things that influence performance which power output data alone fails to capture (weather, race tactics, equipment calibration), making definitive conclusions difficult. It would be a misapplication of science to accuse a rider of doping due to an unrealistic performance, even though many do.

But secrecy and refusal to openly discuss performances inevitably leads to the speculation about their veracity. What most people strive for is a cleaner sport: at times there appears to be a polarised approach, either look to the future and deny everything from the past, or examine every detail and challenge every performance which from time to time leads to unfair accusations. A balanced approach is probably somewhere in the middle.

At the weekend, all eyes will turn to Froome and Team Sky as Tour favourites. Their performances are currently seen as the benchmark for the rest of the peloton, as well as cycling fans who want to know what it takes to win the Tour.

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Crazy Stat Shows Just How Common Doping Was In Cycling When Lance Armstrong Was Winning The Tour de France

Even after Lance Armstrong finally came clean and was banned from cycling for life, many still defend the (unofficial) 7-time Tour de France champion.

The biggest argument for Armstrong is the belief that all riders were doping.

We have known for a while now that a lot of cyclists were doping. A recent breakdown of the extent of the "EPO Era" (named for the most common drug, Erythropoietin) shows the "everybody was doing it" defense may not be that far off.

Teddy Cutler of SportingIntelligence.com recently took a an excellent and detailed look at all the top cyclists from 1998 through 2013 and whether or not they have ever been linked to blood doping or have links to doping or a doctor linked to blood doping.

Related stories

During this 16-year period, 12 Tour de France races were won by cyclists who were confirmed dopers. In addition, of the 81 different riders who finished in the top-10 of the Tour de France during this period, 65% have been caught doping, admitted to blood doping, or have strong associations to doping and are suspected cheaters.

More importantly for Lance Armstrong, during the 7-year window when he won every Tour de France (1999-2005), 87% of the top-10 finishers (61 of 70) were confirmed dopers or suspected of doping.

Of those, 48 (69%) were confirmed, with 39 having been suspended at some point in their career.

None of that excuses Armstrong's behavior, especially outside of the races . But it is clear Armstrong wasn't alone. He was just better at it than anybody else.

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Lance armstrong timeline: cancer, tour de france, doping admission.

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MONTAIGU, FRANCE - JULY 04: TOUR DE FRANCE 1999, 1.Etappe, MONTAIGU - CHALLANS; Lance ARMSTRONG/USA - GELBES TRIKOT - (Photo by Andreas Rentz/Bongarts/Getty Images)

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A look at the rise and fall of Lance Armstrong , who beat testicular cancer to win a record seven Tour de France titles, then was found guilty of and admitted to doping for the majority of his career ...

Aug. 2, 1992: Armstrong, then a 20-year-old amateur cyclist who had left triathlon because it wasn’t an Olympic sport, makes his Olympic debut at the Barcelona Games. He finishes 14th in the road race as the top American, missing a late breakaway. “I don’t think it was one of my better days, unfortunately,” Armstrong said on NBC. “Last couple weeks, everything has been perfect, but today, I just didn’t have what it took.” A week later, Armstrong finished last of 111 riders in his pro debut.

Aug. 29, 1993: Wins the world championships road race, becoming the second U.S. man to win a senior road cycling world title after three-time Tour de France winner Greg LeMond . Armstrong prevails by 19 seconds over Spain’s Miguel Indurain , who won five straight Tours de France from 1991-95. “I’m not sure I’m cut out to be a Tour racer,” Armstrong said, according to the Chicago Tribune . “I love the Tour de France; it’s my favorite bike race, but I’m not fool enough to sit here and say I’m going to win it. For the time being, I’m a one-day rider.”

Aug. 3, 1996: After failing to finish three of his first four Tour de France appearances (and placing 36th in the other), is sixth in the Atlanta Olympic time trial. “This was a big goal and something that I wanted to do well in and wanted the American people to see success,” Armstrong said on NBC. “The legs just weren’t there to win or to medal. I have to move forward and look to the next thing.”

Oct. 2, 1996: Diagnosed with testicular cancer. A day later, he undergoes surgery to have the malignant right testicle removed. Five days later, he begins chemotherapy. Six days later, Armstrong holds a press conference to announce it publicly, saying the cancer spread to his abdomen (and, later, his brain). He described it as “between moderate and advanced” and that his oncologist told him the cure rate was between 65 and 85 percent. “I will win,” Armstrong says. “I intend to beat this disease, and further, I intend to ride again as a professional cyclist.”

Oct. 27, 1996: Betsy Andreu later testifies that, on this date, Armstrong told a doctor at Indiana University Hospital that he had taken performance-enhancing drugs; EPO, testosterone, growth hormone, cortisone and steroids. Andreu said she and others were in a room to hear this. Her husband, Frankie Andreu , an Armstrong cycling teammate, confirmed her recollection to the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA). Armstrong, in admitting to doping in 2013, declined to address what became known as “the hospital room confession.”

January 1997: Establishes the Lance Armstrong Foundation, later called Livestrong, to support cancer awareness and research. Is later declared cancer-free.

Feb. 15, 1998: Returns to racing. Later in September, finishes fourth in his Grand Tour return at the Vuelta a Espana, one of the three Grand Tours after the Giro d’Italia and Tour de France.

1999 Tour de France: Achieves global fame by winning cycling’s most prestigious event in his first Tour de France start since his cancer diagnosis. Armstrong was not a pre-event favorite, but he won the opening 4.2-mile prologue to set the tone. He won all three time trials and, by the end, distanced second-place Alex Zulle by 7 minutes, 37 seconds in a Tour that lacked the previous two winners -- Jan Ullrich and Marco Pantani . Armstrong faced doping questions during the three-week Tour. An Armstrong urine sample revealed a small amount of a corticosteroid, after which Armstrong produced a prescription for a cream to treat saddle sores to justify it. “There’s no secrets here,” Armstrong said after Stage 14. “We have the oldest secret in the book: hard work.”

2000 Tour de France: With Ullrich and Pantani in the field, Armstrong crushed them on Stage 10, taking the yellow jersey by four minutes. He ends up winning the Tour by 6:02 over Ullrich, who over the years became the closest thing Armstrong had to a rival. In a Nike commercial that debuted in January that year , Armstrong again attacked his critics, saying, “Everybody wants to know what I’m on. What am I on? I’m on my bike, busting my ass six hours a day. What are you on?”

Sept. 30, 2000: Takes bronze in the Sydney Olympic time trial, behind Russian Viatcheslav Ekimov (a teammate on Armstrong’s Tour de France teams) and Ullrich. Armstrong would be stripped of the bronze medal 12 years later for doping. “I came to win the gold medal,” he said on NBC. “When you prepare for an event and you come and you do your best, and you don’t win, you have to say, I didn’t deserve to win.”

2001 Tour de France: Third straight Tour title. In Stage 10 on the iconic Alpe d’Huez, Armstrong gave what came to be known as “The Look,” turning back to stare in sunglasses at Ullrich, then accelerating away to win the stage by 1:59 over the German. “I decided to give a look, see how he was, then give a little surge and see what happened,” Armstrong said after the stage. Also that year, LeMond gives a famous quote to journalist David Walsh on Armstrong: “If it is true, it is the greatest comeback in the history of sport. If it is not, it is the greatest fraud.”

2002 Tour de France: Fourth title in a row -- by 7:17 over Joseba Beloki sans Ullirch and Pantani -- with few notable highlights. Maybe the most memorable, French fans yelling “Dope!” as he chased Richard Virenque (another disgraced doper) up the esteemed Mont Ventoux. Armstrong would be named Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year.

2003 Tour de France: By far the closest of the Tour wins -- by 1:01 over Ullrich -- with two very close calls. In Stage 9, Armstrong detoured through a field to avoid a crashing Beloki, who broke his right femur and never contended at a Grand Tour again. In Stage 15, Armstrong’s handlebars caught a spectator’s yellow bag . He crashed to the pavement, remounted and won the stage, upping his lead from 15 seconds to 1:07 over Ullrich.

2004 Tour de France: Record-breaking sixth Tour de France title. Jacques Anquetil , Eddy Merckx , Bernard Hinault and Indurain shared the record of five, and now share the record again after Armstrong’s titles were stripped. Earlier in 2004, the Livestrong yellow bracelet/wristband is introduced. Tens of millions would be sold. He skips the 2004 Athens Olympics, which began three weeks after the Tour ended.

April 18, 2005: Announces he will retire after the 2005 Tour de France. “My children are my biggest supporters, but at the same time, they are the ones who told me it’s time to come home,” Armstrong says. On the same day, former teammate and 2004 Olympic time trial champion Tyler Hamilton is banned two years for blood doping.

2005 Tour de France: Finishes career with seventh Tour de France title. Armstrong remains defiant until the end. In his victory speech atop a podium on the Champs-Elysees, he says with girlfriend Sheryl Crow looking on, “The last thing I’ll say, for the people that don’t believe in cycling, the cynics and the skeptics, I"m sorry for you. I’m sorry you can’t dream big. And I’m sorry you don’t believe in miracles.” A month later, French sports daily newspaper L’Equipe publishes a front-page article headlined, “Le Mensonge Armstrong” or “The Armstrong Lie.” It reports that six Armstrong doping samples at the 1999 Tour de France showed the presence of the banned EPO.

Sept. 9, 2008: Announces comeback, the reason being “to launch an international cancer strategy,” in a video on his foundation’s website . In his 2013 doping confession, Armstrong says he regrets the comeback. “We wouldn’t be sitting here if I didn’t come back,” he tells Oprah Winfrey on primetime TV.

2009 Tour de France: Finishes third, 5:24 behind rival Astana teammate and Spanish winner Alberto Contador . “I can’t complain,” Armstrong said on Versus after the penultimate stage finishing atop Mont Ventoux. “For an old fart, coming in here, getting on the podium with these young guys, not so bad.” USADA later reported that scientific data showed Armstrong used EPO or blood transfusions during that Tour, which Armstrong denied in 2013 when admitting to doping earlier in his career.

2010 Tour de France: Finishes 23rd in his last Tour de France. Armstrong races after former teammate Floyd Landis admits to doping and accuses Armstrong and other former teammates of doping during the Tour de France wins. “At some point, people have to tell their kids that Santa Claus isn’t real,” Landis says in a “Nightline” interview that aired the final weekend of the Tour.

Feb. 16, 2011: Announces retirement, citing tiredness (in multiple respects) at age 39. “I can’t say I have any regrets. It’s been an excellent ride. I really thought I was going to win another Tour,” Armstrong said, according to The Associated Press. “Then I lined up like everybody else and wound up third.”

Aug. 24, 2012: USADA announces Armstrong is banned for life , and all of his results dating to Aug. 1, 1998, annulled, including all seven Tour de France titles. Armstrong chose not to contest the charges, which were first sent to him in a June letter, though he did not publicly admit to cheating. USADA releases details of the investigation in October. The International Cycling Union chooses not to contest USADA’s ruling, formally stripping him of the Tour de France titles. “Lance Armstrong has no place in cycling,” UCI President Pat McQuaid says. In November, a defiant Armstrong tweets an image of him lying on a couch in a room with seven framed Tour de France yellow jerseys on the walls.

Jan. 17, 2013: Admits to doping during all of his Tour de France victories in the Oprah confession that airs on primetime TV. “I viewed this situation as one big lie that I repeated a lot of times,” Armstrong says in a pre-recorded interview. “It’s just this mythic, perfect story, and it wasn’t true.” Armstrong said he did not view it as cheating while he was taking PEDs because others did, too. On the same day, the International Olympic Committee strips Armstrong of his 2000 Olympic bronze medal.

MORE: Giro, Vuelta overlap in new cycling schedule

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The UCI reveals its programme to combat doping and technological fraud for the 2023 Tour de France

The Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) today reveals its programme to combat anti-doping and technological fraud that it will implement for the upcoming Tour de France (1-23 July).

The comprehensive anti-doping programme deployed at the French Grand Tour will be led by the International Testing Agency (ITA), the body to which the UCI delegated the operational activities of its fight for clean cycling in 2021. After ensuring a level playing field for all participants at the Giro d'Italia last May, the ITA will once again work with all stakeholders, including the French authorities, to protect the integrity of one of the world's most prestigious cycling events.

This will be the third time that the ITA has taken charge of the anti-doping programme at the Tour de France since the UCI delegated its anti-doping activities to the agency. Within this framework, the ITA is in charge of the overall anti-doping strategy, which includes the definition of a precise and targeted testing plan. This plan is applied on the basis of a risk assessment that takes into account a wide variety of relevant factors whilst constantly adapting to current circumstances or new information. The testing plan also considers any relevant information received through the monitoring of the athletes’ Athlete Biological Passport (ABP) or gathered by the ITA’s Intelligence & Investigations Department.

All doping controls at the Tour de France will be targeted and performed at any time throughout the three-week race, not only at the finish line. At every stage, the yellow jersey and stage winner will be tested. Additionally, all athletes will already be tested before the start of the event as part of their medical monitoring. At the end of the race, the ITA will make a selection of samples that will be kept for potential re-analysis over the next 10 years.

Doping controls will mainly be conducted by the ITA’s Doping Control Officers (DCOs) with in-depth cycling experience. The ITA is also in close contact with other relevant French and international actors, for example with authorities, for support and exchange of information.

It should be remembered that 2023 has seen a significant increase in funding for cycling’s anti-doping programme . The UCI, UCI WorldTeams, UCI ProTeams, UCI WorldTour organisers and men’s professional road cyclists decided to further strengthen the capacity of the ITA to protect the integrity of the sport thanks to a progressive 35% budget increase up until the end of 2024. This funding principally reinforces the areas of Intelligence & Investigations, testing, scientific analysis, data analysis, long-term sample storage and sample re-analysis.

The Director General of the ITA Benjamin Cohen said: “We are looking forward to delivering the anti-doping programme for this major cycling race for the third time under the responsibility of the ITA and in collaboration with our partners to ensure a level playing field during the event. As the testing operations for this event are already at a vigorous level, the additional resources stemming from the decision of the cycling stakeholders to further protect the sport from doping will allow us to step up in other relevant areas of the clean sport programme for the Tour de France and throughout the year. Most notably, it allows us to invest more in intelligence and investigations, an area that has proven to be very effective and complementary to the testing regime. We are steadfast in our commitment to ensure a clean and fair competition environment for all participants in this highly anticipated event.”

When it comes to the fight against technological fraud at the Tour de France, controls for the presence of any possible propulsion systems hidden in tubes and other bike components will be carried out with the use of three tools: magnetic tablets, mobile X-Ray cabinet and portable devices using backscatter and transmission technologies.

Before each of the 21 stages, a UCI Technical Commissaire will be at the team buses to check all bikes being ridden at the start of that day’s stage. These pre-stage checks will be carried out using magnetic tablets.

After each stage , checks will be carried out on bikes ridden by:

the stage winner

riders wearing a leader’s jersey (yellow, green, polka dot, white)

three to four randomly-selected riders

riders who give rise to suspicion, for example following the pre-stage scan, an abnormally high number of bike changes (in which case the bikes on the team car can also be checked) or other incidents picked up by the UCI Video Commissaire

These post-stage checks will be carried out using either mobile X-Ray technology or devices that use backscatter and transmission technologies. If necessary, the bike in question will be dismantled.

Once the riders have crossed the finish line, the bikes subject to post-stage checks will be quickly tagged, enabling rapid control procedures to be carried out in a matter of minutes. The introduction of RFID tagging (tamper-proof tags using radio frequency identification technology) for all bicycles as part of the UCI Road Equipment Registration Procedure for the 2023 Tour de France and Tour de France Women with Zwift strengthens the UCI's ability to monitor the use of bicycles throughout the stages.

As a reminder, the mobile X-Ray technology, which is safe for users and riders, provides high resolution X-Ray image of a complete bike in just five minutes. Meanwhile the backscatter and transmission technology provides instantaneous high resolution images of the interior of the sections examined that can be transmitted, remotely, directly to the UCI Commissaires.

For road cycling, the UCI carries out bike checks at all UCI WorldTour events, as well as the UCI Road World Championships, UCI Para-cycling Road World Championships, UCI Para-cycling Road World Cup, UCI Women’s WorldTour events and the Olympic Games. Controls are also carried out at UCI World Championships for mountain bike, cyclo-cross and track as well as the UCI Cyclo-cross World Cup.

At last year’s Tour de France, a total of 934 bike checks were carried out and no cases of technological fraud were detected.

UCI Director General Amina Lanaya said: "The UCI continues to take the possibility of technological fraud very seriously. Our range of tools to combat all forms of cheating using a motor enables us to carry out rapid and effective checks. With the introduction of RFID tags on all the bikes, the UCI has the ability to monitor the use of the bikes during the race. This is essential to guarantee the fairness of cycling competitions and to protect the integrity of the sport and its athletes."

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How doping works in cycling, explained by a physiologist and former pro rider

We talked to an expert to learn more about how today’s cyclists cheat — from EPO, to salbutamol, to ... uh ... poop doping.

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Athletes cheat. And one of the best ways to cheat is to take banned substances to give your body a boost.

And there’s no sport and sporting event so inextricably linked to cheating as cycling and the Tour de France . Lance Armstrong is the face of cycling’s doping problem, but in truth the sport was cheating long before Armstrong, and in all sorts of creative ways . That legacy will undoubtedly continue long into the future. Don’t be surprised if you start hearing the term “poop doping” on a regular basis someday.

As for the present, well, you may have heard of Chris Froome, a man approaching Armstrong-ian levels of yellow jersey success who has also become embroiled in a doping scandal. Froome was found with twice the permitted level of salbutamol, an asthma medication, in his system during last year’s Vuelta a España, and was briefly banned from the Tour before being cleared five days before the start of the race .

The point being, cheating in sports is not going away any time soon, nor is it getting any easier to comprehend. To help explain, SB Nation spoke to Dr. Stacy Sims, an environmental exercise physiologist and nutrition scientist at the University of Waikato in New Zealand. Sims was a pro women’s cyclist who later went on to work with men’s pro cycling teams like Saxo and Dimension Data during the Tour de France, advising team chef Hannah Grant on rider nutrition.

Sims understands cyclists’ bodies perhaps as well as anyone can. She answered our questions cycling’s love affair with erythropoietin (better known as EPO), how asthma medication would help a rider — and, yes, if poop doping is really a thing.

EPO is the big thing. What advantage does EPO give you? And how does EPO work?

Dr. Stacy Sims: EPO is the hormone that is released in the kidney when you have a low partial pressure of oxygen. And you can naturally produce it by doing some dehydrated activity in the heat, or you go to altitude, and it’s your body’s drive to need more red cells, because red cells are responsible for picking up and delivering oxygen. So the idea behind taking EPO is to increase that red blood cell production, because with increased red cells, you have increased oxygen carrying capacity, and increased oxygen delivery capacity.

The idea behind lots of people using it is that it is a really fast way for red cell development. But the flip side to that is, if you get too many red cells in your blood and your blood becomes too viscous, then it actually can’t move through the body, which is why they have that cutoff of 50 [percent volume red blood cells to total blood volume].

So your hemoglobin and your hematocrit levels are tightly monitored. We look more at your hematocrit, because it’s your red cell count. And when it starts approaching that 50 mark, and 50 and beyond, that’s a tipping point for someone doping, and it is a health hazard, because if you get too much of that hematocrit, your blood just doesn’t go where it needs to go and it can’t function properly.

Is it possible to get past that 50 mark naturally? Has there ever been anyone who has been able to do that naturally?

SS: It depends on when you test them. If you test someone when they’re dehydrated, like after a max test or something, and they’re sitting around 47 to 48, then you’ll see that they’re 52 because they’ve lost a lot of the water out of their blood, so their blood is concentrated.

There are some anomalies. Cyclists, again, it’s really hard to tease out because of the incidence of doping. I would love to be able to have a clean team and really, as much as people say they are, you have your doubts. But it is possible.

It has an aspect of living in altitude, and having a high testosterone level. Then your body will compensate and produce more red cells just because it needs that for the oxygen, and the testosterone is a drive for producing EPO.

In what ways does doping throw off long-term studies on grand tour riders? And are riders who use EPO likely to have long-term problems?

SS: I think if they use EPO, then they will. Just from the aspect of having a really high hematocrit level, and you have to look at cardiovascular incidences of “sticky cells,” so there’s a higher amount of stuff in the blood — so you have your red cells, and your platelets, and fractions of cells — and if they are under this constant load of exercise and high sugar, then their vessels aren’t as compliant. So longer term, you can have some disorder with regards to vessel compliancy, so they become very stiff, they don’t have as much nitric oxide response, so their blood pressure is off and they’re dealing with high blood pressure.

You can end up with some vascular disease. So the longer term consequence of having that artificially high production of red cells can have a huge impact on overall cardiovascular and total vascular health.

Chris Froome was caught last September with excess Salbutamol in his system. That was new to me. How does excess asthmas medication help a rider?

SS: It is a bronchial dilator. I’ll take it back a step — the whole buzz about beet juice being a vasodilator, increasing blood circulation to the muscles without as much work, it’s the same idea of using clenbuterol or another type of asthma inhaler, where it increases the surface space of the bronchials so you have more oxygen transfer. So effectively with every breath, you can intake and transfer more oxygen to the cells. So again, it’s all about that oxygen delivery.

Is this something that has been common in cycling for a long time? Why don’t we see this happen more?

SS: I think a lot of people use the TUE [Therapeutic Use Exemption] as an excuse. Especially undercards of testosterone or asthma medication, people start to really question the harder drugs of like growth hormone and that kind of stuff. The common medications that are prescribed that can also be ergogenic, if you have a TUE, then it’s almost a carte blanche to use it regardless.

And I think that can be kind of why people are not necessarily bringing it to the table, so to speak. Because there are some people who legitimately need asthma inhalers, and there are some people who have Low T. Low T can be mitigated with energy availability and nutrient timing, and making sure you are on par with your intake, people don’t want to take the time to do it, they’d rather just take the drug.

The same with pseudoephedrine and ephedrine, that was taken off [the permitted substance list] because it was such a powerful stimulant, and such a powerful vasodilator. People can get it over the counter in cold medications, and they’re like, ‘Woah, this is such a significant ergogenic aid, we need to take it off.’ So there are some things that come up.

That’s where this health and performance line comes into play, because you have physicians who are like, ‘We need it for health,’ and then you have people who are monitoring for performance going, ‘Well, actually it enhances performance, are you sure?’ But they can’t necessarily question the physician.

Can I get your opinion on poop doping, and have you been looking into that at all?

SS: Into what doping?

Poop doping. There was a researcher who looked at the gut biomes of professional road racers and compared them to amateur cyclists and found that the best riders had this certain bacteria in their gut, and she posited that you could —

SS: — essentially change your gut microbiome and dope to — yeah.

I mean, in theory it seems like it would work. But in practice, there are so many other factors. We put it kinda also in the epigenetic aspect where you can take in certain things and cause a genetic expression, either over or under expression, and that may or may not enhance performance. This is the same with gut microbiome. I mean, seven days of one type of exposure will completely change a microbiome. So not only do they have to take the probiotics or the actual bacteria that mimics what the pro rider has, they also have to live the lifestyle, they have to be exposed to the same bacteria every day that’s on the counters and the sinks. They have to be exposed to the same food that’s grown in the same soil.

Again, in theory, probably. But in practice, I think it’s much more complex than what she’s talking about.

So you think it’s probably unlikely that someone riding the Tour de France this year is poop doping.

SS: [Laughs] Right.

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The ITA is ready to deliver a robust anti-doping program for the 2023 Tour de France

The international testing agency (ita), leading the cycling clean sport efforts on behalf of the union cycliste internationale (uci), is prepared to protect fair play at the tour de france through a comprehensive anti-doping program. after already ensuring a level playing field at the giro d’italia in may, the ita is collaborating with all involved stakeholders, including the french authorities, to protect clean sport at one of the world’s most prestigious cycling events..

It is the third time that the ITA will independently lead the clean sport program for the Tour de France since the delegation of cycling’s anti-doping activities by the UCI. The ITA is in charge of the overall clean sport strategy for the French Grand Tour, including the definition of an intelligence-led testing plan. This plan is applied on the basis of a bespoke risk assessment that takes into account a weighed variety of relevant factors whilst constantly adapting to current circumstances or new information through permanent monitoring. The testing plan also considers any relevant information received through the monitoring of the athletes’ Athlete Biological Passport (ABP) and any insights gathered by the ITA’s Intelligence & Investigations department.

All doping controls at the Tour de France will be targeted and performed anytime over the course of the three-week race, not only at the finish line. At every stage, the yellow jersey and stage winner will be tested. Additionally, all athletes will already be tested before the start of the event as part of their medical monitoring. At the end of the race, the ITA will make a selection of samples that will be kept for potential re-analysis over the next 10 years.

Doping controls will mainly be conducted by the ITA’s own Doping Control Officer (DCO) force with in-depth cycling experience. For the roll-out of the anti-doping program, the ITA collaborates with the French National Anti-Doping Organisation (AFLD), who will offer support with their doping control personnel. The ITA is also in close contact with other relevant French and international actors, for example with authorities at different sectoral levels, for support and information-exchange.

Furthermore, 2023 marks the first year of increased resources to foster fairer cycling . The UCI, UCI WorldTeams, UCI ProTeams, UCI WorldTour organisers, and men’s Professional Road Cyclists have decided to strengthen the ITA’s capacity to protect the integrity of the sport with a gradual 35% budget increase until the end of 2024. This funding primarily supports areas such as Intelligence & Investigations (I&I), testing, science, data analysis, long-term sample storage, and sample re-analysis.

“We are looking forward to delivering the anti-doping program for this major cycling race for the third time under the responsibility of the ITA and in collaboration with our partners to ensure a level playing field during the event,” said ITA Director General Benjamin Cohen. “As the testing operations for this event are already at a vigorous level, the additional resources stemming from the decision of the cycling stakeholders to further protect the sport from doping will allow us to step up in other relevant areas of the clean sport program for the Tour de France and throughout the year. Most notably, it allows us to invest more in intelligence and investigations, an area that has proven to be very effective and complementary to the testing regime. We are steadfast in our commitment to ensure a clean and fair competition environment for all participants in this highly anticipated event.”

Related News

2 December 2022

More resources for more impact: Cycling’s stakeholders increase funding of the UCI anti-doping program managed by the ITA

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Tour de France Winner Jan Ullrich Admits to Doping and the Aftermath of Drug Abuse

“It turned me into a monster.”

He dropped the truth bomb Wednesday at a panel for his documentary, saying simply, “Yes, I did dope,” according to German website Speigel.de . He said the doping began in 1996, the year before he won the Tour de France. (“I was young and naive and came into an existing system,” he said .)

In this translated interview, Ullrich seemed to be using that old chestnut, the ‘but everyone else was doing it’ excuse. “Knowing that you otherwise have no chance from the start was the hardest thing,” said Ullrich [translated]. “Because I’m a fair person, it was never about cheating anyone or gaining an advantage.”

Amongst his chief rivals was Lance Armstrong—who ultimately became a close friend after they’d both left the sport.

Ullrich was ultimately suspended in 2006 right before the start of the Tour de France, as part of the blood doping ring run by Spanish doctor Eufemiano Fuentes . This suspension marked the end of his pro cycling career, and in the documentary, he openly talks about his sharp downturn that happened a decade later.

He experienced a mental and physical breakdown which led to issues with alcohol, cocaine abuse, and eventually, an assault on a prostitute in 2019, for which he was fined and received a criminal record . He admitted in an interview that his addiction to whiskey and cocaine “turned him into a monster.”

Should Ullrich be allowed to keep his yellow jersey?

Ullrich was also questioned as to whether he should be allowed to keep his 1997 Tour de France title, given his admission. He said that he believes he should be allowed to keep it, but that the choice isn’t up to him.

Now, his children are involved in cycling, and he hopes to be as well—how much he’ll be allowed to will depend on how the German governing body takes his doping admission. But Ullrich does seem to be in a healthier, happier place and has rekindled his love of cycling, whether or not the cycling world will welcome him with open arms.

The four-part documentary on Ullrich is titled ‘Der Gejagte’ (translation: ‘The Hunted’), and will be released on Amazon Prime in Germany from November 28, 2023. TBD if it will be released stateside.

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‘Yes, I doped’ - Jan Ullrich makes full doping confession

1997 Tour de France winner believes he deserves to keep his victory

Jan Ullrich has finally fully confessed to doping, including before he won the 1997 Tour de France, revealing how he opted for the lowest risk when choosing a blood doping programme with the infamous Dr. Eufemiano Fuentes. 

“Yes, I doped,” Ullrich said to Stern and other German media after a pre-release screening of the four-part documentary 'Der Gejagte' ('The Hunted'), which will be released on Amazon Prime in Germany from November 28.  

Ullrich's victory in the 1997 Tour de France made him the poster boy for a boom in German cycling and he remains the only German to ever have won the sport's biggest race. 

He became Lance Armstrong's biggest rival in the sport after the Texan returned to racing following treatment for testicular cancer, but he never managed to beat Armstrong or win the Tour again, finishing second in 1998, 2000, 2001 and 2003.

Ullrich’s career ended abruptly when he was pulled from the 2006 Tour before the start in Strasbourg after serious accusations of blood doping emerged.  

Jan Ullrich: I was just like Marco Pantani… nearly dead 'I took cocaine, drank whisky like water and was close to death' – Jan Ullrich opens up in documentary

Jan Ullrich opens up about doping before documentary about his traumatic life and career

Ullrich confessed to working with Dr. Fuentes back in 2013 and has more recently indicated he doped and tried to justify why. 

Now he has openly confessed to doping just before the release of the documentary, which comes after the two years of filming and research. The process was part of Ullrich's period of introspection after a mental and physical breakdown in 2018, fuelled by whisky and cocaine, almost killed him. 

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The documentary will initially be available in Germany, Austria and Switzerland but the production company behind it is negotiating with other territories. 

During the filming of the documentary, Ullrich visited Marco Pantani’s home town of Cesenatico and met his parents, learning of the tragedy of Pantani’s death after several years of cocaine use and mental illness. Pantani’s mother attended the pre-release showing of the documentary in Munich on Wednesday, along with Ivan Basso and Ullrich's former directeurs sportifs at Team Telekom, Rudy Pevenage and Olaf Ludwig.

“It was a huge shock for me at the time,” Ullrich said of Pantani's death in a long interview with Armstrong published in Germany newspaper Zeit .  

Armstrong  travelled to Europe to help Ullrich when he was at his lowest in 2018 and the two fierce rivals are now good friends.

“His mum was incredibly touched when I stood in front of her, there is a real connection. Even if it sounds trite: in a way we are like one big family,” Ullrich said of Pantani. 

Early this week Ullrich explained that he refused to confess to doping despite the growing evidence because he didn’t want to “drag a lot of people down with me into the abyss.” 

Looking fatigued after making a complete confession to different German media on Wednesday evening, Ullrich now regrets not confessing sooner. 

"If I had told my story, I would have had many wonderful years. But I didn't have the courage. Now it feels good to admit my guilt," he told the dpa news agency and other German media.     

"Almost everyone took performance-enhancing substances back then. I didn't take anything that the others didn't take. For me, cheating starts when I gain an advantage. That wasn't the case. I wanted to ensure equal opportunities.

“I was guilty and now I feel guilty. I can say with all my heart that I did not want to deceive anyone. I didn't want to get ahead of the other riders.

"It was just a different time then. Cycling had a system and I ended up in that. For me it was important to start the races with equal opportunities."

Ullrich won the amateur world title at just 19 in Oslo in 1993, when future rival Armstrong won the professional men’s road race at just 21. 

Ullrich now reveals he started doping soon afterwards, when he turned professional with T-Mobile.  

“I came into contact with it in 1995/1996, before the Tour de France . At the time it was explained to me in a plausible way. I was not afraid. It was so obvious to me at the time,” he admitted.

“I was young and naive and came into an existing system. And that was made so palatable and indispensable to me that I decided to do it. My career would have been over if I hadn’t done it. I never felt like a criminal."

Lance Armstrong’s seven Tour de France were officially removed from the record book after he was banned for doping by USADA but Ullrich’s former teammate Bjarne Riis is still officially the 1996 winner after his doping confession. 

Ullirich believes he deserves to still be considered a Tour de France winner, despite now confessing to doping even before his 1997 victory.   

“I know what I have achieved. Personally, I think I deserve the title. Others have to decide that. But in my heart I am a Tour de France winner,” he said .

When a blood haematocrit threshold and then an anti-doping test for EPO were introduced, Ullrich, like some of his biggest, most daring rivals, switched to blood doping. 

"I wanted to win and build on my successes. I had a new team at the time and Dr. Fuentes was recommended to me - that's how I ended up there," he revealed, unafraid of the medical consequences, yet also concerned about taking too many risks. 

“Everything was medically controlled. Ultimately, it was my own blood that I had taken, something natural and under medical supervision, I wasn't afraid. 

“Fuentes asked me: Which traffic light do you want to go through? The green, the yellow or the red? It was immediately clear to me - these are the risk levels. I said: always green. I don’t even want to know what the other levels are.”

The Ullrich documentary will be released on November 28, and the German will turn 50 on December 2. He has slowly rebuilt his life since his problems in 2018, with cycling and his children playing a major role in his return to health and stability. 

His confession to doping is a final step toward full personal redemption.   

“I am healthy, I have both feet back in life and have found my centre,” he said. “Life has become easier.” 

Ullrich’s children have started cycling and racing themselves, apparently with some of the talent of their father. He hopes to even find a role in the sport, if is forgiven for his doping, especially in Germany, where a black and white stance to cheating, and especially to doping in cycling, still runs strong.    

"If I had the opportunity, I would take the chance because I'm a master in this field and I still feel good," Ullrich said. "I simply love this sport and it will shape me throughout my life."

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'There has been motorised doping in the Tour de France': US TV investigation

US television programme 60 Minutes broadcasts findings of its investigation into hidden motors and professional cycling

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US television programme 60 Minutes investigated motorised cheating in professional cycling in a show aired last night, claiming that motorised bikes have been used in the Tour de France .

60 Minutes journalist Bill Whitaker interviewed motorised bike pioneer Istvan 'Stefano' Varjas, three-time Tour de France winner Greg LeMond and his wife Kathy, and others. The show provided no direct evidence of cheating by cyclists.

"Stefano said he told the French police that just before the 2015 Tour de France he again sold motorised bikes to an unknown client through a middleman," Whitaker said. "He said he was directed to deliver the bikes to a locked storage room in the town of Beaulieu Sur Mer, France."

The programme indicated that the wheels were motorised. Varjas said "enhanced wheels" weigh about 800 grams more than normal wheels. The programme claims that Team Sky 's bicycles were heavier than all others in the 2015 Tour.

>>> French Government reject motion to make motor doping a criminal offence

"In the 2015 Tour de France, bikes in the peloton were weighed before one of the time trial stages. French authorities told us the British Team Sky was the only team with bikes heavier than the rest – each bike weighed about 800 grams more," Whitaker continued.

"A spokesman for Team Sky said that during a time trial stage bikes might be heavier to allow for better aerodynamic performance. He said the team has never used mechanical assistance and that the bikes were checked and cleared by the sports governing body."

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When contacted by Cycling Weekly for this article, a Team Sky spokesperson said: "It wasn't mentioned in the [ 60 Minutes ] report, but all of Team Sky's bikes were subject to an unannounced post-stage mechanical check at the end of the stage. This is all recorded in the communique released on the day.

"There are significant variances in the weights of bikes caused by a range of different factors."

The 2015 Tour, won by Chris Froome , began with a time trial in Utrecht and included another one, a team time trial, in Plumelec. Rohan Dennis (BMC Racing) won the first and his BMC team took the second by one second over Team Sky.

"To Greg LeMond the weight difference should have set off alarm bells," added Whitaker. "In this case, sources told us, the sport's governing body would not allow French investigators to remove the Team Sky wheels and weigh them separately to determine if the wheels were enhanced."

Jean-Pierre Verdy, the former testing director for the French Anti-Doping Agency, said that riders have ridden motorised bikes in the Tour.

>>> British Cycling checked 1,310 bikes for hidden motors in 2016

"It's been the last three to four years when I was told about the use of the motors," Verdy said. "And in 2014, they told me there are motors. And they told me, there's a problem. By 2015, everyone was complaining and I said, something's got to be done."

Through insiders in the peloton, Verdy explained that he learned 12 riders used hidden motors in their bikes in the 2015 Tour.

The UCI carried out various tests in recent years. Helped by the Italian authorities, 37 bicycles were stripped and examined after the 2015 Milan-San Remo .

Beginning in 2016, the UCI started using tablets to scan large number of bikes before races. Others argue that different methods, such as thermal imaging cameras, should be used.

Hungarian engineer Varjas said that hidden motors existed since 1998, when he first developed a version suitable enough to go unnoticed.

Through a friend, Varjas made an exclusive deal with a professional cyclist.

"Stefano swears he has no idea who it was. He gave us this bank record that shows that he had about $2 million at the time," Whitaker said.

>>> UCI blocked police checks for hidden motors at Tour de France, claims expert

"We also know that he spent time in jail for not paying a substantial tax bill in Hungary. He said whoever paid him all that money wanted an exclusive deal—he couldn't work on the motor, sell it or talk about it for 10 years."

"For 10 years. $2 million," said Varjas. "Can you refuse it? I don't think."

Lance Armstrong won the Tour from 1999 through 2005, titles that were later stripped when investigators proved he doped. In a radio interview with Ger Gilroy in October, Armstrong said that he never cheated with a motor .

"In 1999, no one even knew you could put motor [in a bike]. Are you out of your mind?" Armstrong said.

60 Minutes asked and Armstrong denied ever using a motor. He declined an interview.

His former team-mate Tyler Hamilton, who admitted to doping and wrote a book explaining the details of their system, said he was unaware of hidden motors in that time period.

The show bought a Trek US Postal Service bike from that period and had Varjas install a motor. They paid $12,000 for parts and labour.

Hamilton tried it and said, "I could see how teams are doing it. Yeah. I could." He said the power boost over 20 minutes on a climb would be a "game changer."

So far, the UCI has only caught one motorised cheat among the peloton. Last year in the cyclocross World Championships, it busted 19-year-old Belgian Femke Van den Driessche . She was banned from competition for six years.

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Gregor Brown is an experienced cycling journalist, based in Florence, Italy. He has covered races all over the world for over a decade - following the Giro, Tour de France, and every major race since 2006. His love of cycling began with freestyle and BMX, before the 1998 Tour de France led him to a deep appreciation of the road racing season. 

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White noise of scepticism shrouds Vingegaard after Tour dominance

Yellow jersey holder forced to answer questions over how he is so far ahead as sport’s uncomfortable history casts its shadow

T he knives are out, or at least unsheathed, for Jonas Vingegaard at the Tour de France, but then it doesn’t take much to trigger scepticism towards the wearer of the yellow jersey. It is always there, simmering away, even though 25 years have passed since the Festina affair of 1998 and more than a decade since Lance Armstrong confessed his doping sins to Oprah Winfrey.

Vingegaard, like so many before him, is having to recite the same mantra: trust me, I work hard, I sacrifice so much. Believe me, I am not taking anything.

Entering Thursday’s stage with a 7min 35sec lead over Tadej Pogacar and a 10:45 margin to third-placed Adam Yates, the Dane may well win this Tour by 10 minutes, which would be the biggest margin of victory since Jan Ullrich won by more than nine minutes in 1997.

It doesn’t help that the modern history of the Tour, from Lance to Landis, from Wiggins to Froome, is shrouded in a white noise of scepticism and suspicion, which ebbs and flows according to the nature of performances. That is the unavoidable context, despite all the talk of a new generation. Yet some of the questioning of Vingegaard has been based not only on his results, but also on his taciturn nature and his undeniable Danishness.

On Wednesday, after he pulverised Pogacar on the merciless slopes of the Col de la Loze, the questions came again. “I can tell, from my heart, that I don’t take anything,” he said. “I don’t take anything that I wouldn’t give to my daughter and I would definitely not give her any drugs.”

His Jumbo-Visma team manager, Grischa Niermann, defended his rider. “I’m not Jonas,” the German former professional said, “but I think he’s said a hundred thousand times that there is no performance-enhancing stuff, which is not allowed, and I’m 100% putting my fingers in the fire for that.”

A degree of scepticism towards Vingegaard became open derision in some French media outlets after he flamed the opposition in Tuesday’s time-trial stage from Passy to Combloux. “From another planet,” headlined L’Équipe while Aujourd’hui asked: “How did he do it?” It was an extraordinary performance, magnified for some, by Pogacar’s decline. A winning margin of 30 seconds would perhaps not have been so remarked upon, but inflicting a defeat of 1:38 in 22.4km on the Slovenian stretched credulity for some commentators.

However, the ailing Pogacar was already slipping out of contention, as the following day’s collapse on the brutal stage to Courchevel showed. Vingegaard had done enough earlier in the race,by containing his rival. Now, with Pogacar out of steam, he could press home his advantage.

It is not just trust in the riders that is so fragile, but also trust in the sport’s administration. Fraud in cycling has long been a characteristic. In the earliest years of the Tour, riders took lifts, skipped sections of the course and even caught trains.

As well as the threat of doping, cycling’s governing body, the UCI, now regularly scan the peloton’s bikes for concealed motors. Machines are X-rayed every day, including the race leader, stage winner, other classification leaders and some selected at random.

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The use of motors, surely the darkest of the dark arts, has long been suspected. Femke Van den Driessche was suspended for six years after being caught using one in the 2016 Cyclo-cross World Championships. No one has been caught using them in Europe’s Grand Tours.

“We have a very solid and robust testing programme for both anti-doping and technological fraud and there is no reason to have doubts,” the UCI president, David Lappartient, said in 2016. “However, zero risk doesn’t exist.”

Vingegaard’s vagueness about his power outputs after Tuesday’s time trial and the reluctance of his team to open up his power files have also raised questions of malpractice. But other teams adopt the same policy for fear of leaking too much knowledge to their rivals. And it is obvious that athlete development has continued, sports science has moved at high speed, equipment is hugely enhanced, insight and understanding of performance and nutrition is now fine-tuned to the rigours of the Tour. Scrutiny and vigilance of the sport has also ramped up, albeit not especially rapidly.

All of that is just a smokescreen, argue the sceptics. Look at the range of performances, the history of the sport, the development of new doping practices. Some people have short memories, they say. Unfortunately for Vingegaard, many Tour watchers also have long ones.

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