The American Lance Armstrong was marked forever. After having won the Tour de France seven times, from 1999 to 2005, he was stripped of all his titles after it was found that he was doping.
The Armstrong thing clouded the development of cycling in those years, since his case was not the only one. Several riders ended up sanctioned due to the discovery of doping networks.
Johan Bruyneel, a former Belgian cyclist, shared the peloton with Armstrong and later served as his sports director for the US Postal and Discovery Channel teams. He then he headed to Astana. Bruynell pays a lifetime ban for the use of prohibited substances.
Bruyneel has just given an interview to HLN, a media outlet in his country, in which he gave details of the tricks he used to systematically doping his runners, including Armstrong.
The Belgian acknowledged that he himself used doping when he ran and that this experience helped him develop a plan in his team. “The year 1996 was the peak of EPO use. I was running at the time. I also used EPO. I regret that? No. I was part of that generation, it was then. It was join or go home. It’s not that Lance Armstrong invented doping in 1999 and that doping ceased to exist in 2005,” Bruyneel said.
“As a cyclist, you end up in a system, whatever the system is. That used to be doping, now it is a scientific approach”, added the Belgian, in the interview that was reproduced by the Spanish newspaper ABC.
Why didn’t they detect EPO doping at that time?
Bruyneel assured that to avoid being discovered there was a self-regulation. “The limit was to have a hematocrit of 50. This was an indirect way of restricting the use of EPO. For me it was simple: I became the team manager at US Postal in 1999. I had just stopped being a cyclist myself and knew very well how a cyclist thinks. As long as something cannot be traced, it will be used. What to do then? Do you leave everyone alone, saying, ‘We’ve got to get results. Do what you want, but make sure you don’t get caught’? That is basically what has been said everywhere. I had a different opinion on the matter. He didn’t want to leave the cyclists, he wanted to control them. That’s why I set the limit at 48 percent hematocrit. Anyone who exceeded that limit before departure would be sent home, ”he explained.
Armstrong’s former coach even pointed out that the method worked by showing that, at the time, none of his runners tested positive and his health was threatened.
“I regret that? No. No former cyclist on my team will ever be able to say that I pushed him, forced him or put his health at risk. On the other hand, no rider on our team ever resorted to doping without having asked for it himself.” assured.
Bruyneel defended himself by assuring that in his days as sports director, doping was widespread. “Blood transfusions? Yes it’s true. The ‘motorman’ who went to Nice with EPO in the cooler? That is also true. What is better? In other times they hid the EPO in the tires of the cars. At that time, from 1999 to 2001, the system was as follows: the top twenty, thirty, forty and fifty in the Tour classification were doped with EPO and 90 percent of the peloton was taking EPO”, he insisted.
About current cycling, Bruyneel considers that there is no systematic doping as in his time. “Doping no longer exists, or in any case it is minor. There is nothing that offers a 5-10 percent advantage. They all play by the same rules, ”he concluded.
“I have felt like an outcast, not anymore. But he certainly played a role. I don’t think if I were to meet Tour boss Christian Prudhomme he would greet me. At one point, Armstrong was bigger than the Tour. The Tour had a hard time dealing with it,” he added.
Bruyneel criticized the Tour organization’s decision to erase Armstrong as champion. “Trying to rewrite Tour de France history by removing a seven-time winner from the Tour de France, as the ASO has done, is pretty ridiculous. Ask your opponents from that time who was the winner of the Tours from 1999 to 2005. Ullrich won’t say that he won, Basso and Klöden won’t either, and Zülle and Beloki won’t either,” he opined.
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