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The Sun
a day ago
- Entertainment
- The Sun
‘How do you stay so fit?' – Bradley Wiggins pokes fun at disgraced Lance Armstrong as fans say ‘love this bromance'
BRADLEY WIGGINS poked fun at disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong as he quipped 'how do you stay so fit?' The two cycling legends linked up for an unlikely meeting at a bike event. 8 8 8 8 Wiggins, 45, and Armstrong, 53, posed for snaps together as they cracked smiles for the camera. And as they continued to talk, Armstrong tucked into a packed plate of cinnamon rolls. But this left Wiggins bemused as he questioned the icon's sweet diet. And he cheekily poked fun at Amstrong by asking: 'How do you stay so fit when you eat like a 12-year-old?' Fans were left amused as they 'loved the bromance' between the pair, although some were more concerned by Wiggins' extremely short shorts. One said: 'The breakfast of champions.' Another declared: 'Wiggo loves them short shorts.' One noted: 'The real story is those shorty shorts though.' Another added: 'Two legends.' Armstrong won a record seven consecutive Tour de Frances during the peak of his career between 1999 and 2005. Inside the 'second coming' of Sir Bradley Wiggins as he makes return to cycling after 'isolating himself from the world 8 8 8 8 The victories were made even more remarkable by the fact he was diagnosed with testicular cancer in 1996. However, Armstrong was stripped of his victories in 2012 after he was found guilty of using performance-enhancing drugs. The legend was banned for life from professional cycling events and reportedly lost around £70million-worth of sponsorship deals in one single day. As for Wiggins, he won the 2012 Tour de France and also picked up four gold medals for Team GB ranging from the 2004 Olympics up to Rio 2016. Wiggins was knighted in 2013 and was also crowned BBC Sports Personality of the Year.
New York Times
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
The making of Tadej Pogacar, the Tour de France's laidback superstar
Lille's Opera House has gold leaf on the ceiling, the crimson carpet of an emperor's robe, and some fifty cameras pointing towards Tadej Pogačar. Sitting, blinking, in the world champion's jersey one day before the 2025 Tour de France, Pogačar only takes a moment to grow accustomed to his surroundings. Swiftly, he picks up his phone, turns his back to the room, and snaps a quick selfie. Advertisement 'Why did you do that?' is the first question he is asked. 'Funny,' he replies simply, with a boyish grin. In this way, as in many others, the cycling world is now at the 26-year-old's beck and call. Over the past five years, Pogačar has proven himself capable of winning almost any race on the sport's calendar — Grand Tours, spring classics, the world championship. He is arguably the first cyclist to have transcended the sport since Lance Armstrong. After taking a three-minute and 31-second lead over Jonas Vingegaard on Wednesday, he is the overwhelming favourite to win his fourth Tour de France. No rider will ever have done that at a younger age. Pogačar's physical ability is self-evident. But in a sport sometimes synonymous with intensity and detail, it is also the Slovenian's laidback nature that stands out — an essential lightness to his being, a head which does not hang heavy with the crown. It appears, certainly, that Pogačar's hyper-aggressive riding style stems from a kinship with risk which few other elite riders dare near. 'He's just playing in the sand like he's a kid,' says his friend and fellow Slovenian Matej Mohoric. 'Obviously he wants to win. Cycling is all he cares about. Not much else. But he just wants to wake up every day, ride his bike, and then wake up and go riding the next day. But he's never stressed about it.' This is the making of Tadej Pogačar — cycling's nonchalant superstar. On the morning of stage 10, Mirko and Marjeta Pogačar's camper van is parked in a lay-by, some seven kilometres from the summit of Le Mont-Dore Puy de Sancy. They make the climb later that day, watching Pogačar's attempts to gap Vingegaard and Remco Evenepoel on its upper slopes. For most parents, this would be a stressful day. There are attacks everywhere and Tadej loses the yellow jersey, temporarily, to Ireland's Ben Healy. Not for Mirko and Marjeta. 'We were calm,' Marjeta says that evening. 'It was a nice day out.' Advertisement Far from the private jets that accompany the families of other elite sportspeople, they have driven 400km over the past 24 hours to see their son for 30 seconds. They first bought the camper van after his first Tour win in 2020, and still live in their children's childhood home. It could be any normal family on their summer holidays — Mirko managed a chair factory, while Marjeta taught French at the local school. Both now run the Tadej Pogačar Foundation. 'It was never our aim that one of our children would reach this level,' says Marjeta, two hours after the stage. 'We just wanted our children to be active, to have friends in different environments — that was our goal.' Part of Pogačar's upbringing was to understand the importance of hard work. His story begins with his father Mirko's — who, when growing up on a farm as a 14-year-old, experienced both of his own parents falling ill. It meant he had to take responsibility for the family alongside his brother at a very young age, and had no chance to play sport himself. 'So when Tadej was young, we wanted our children to also go and help out on the family farm,' Marjeta explains. She is the family spokesperson, though she and Mirko discuss the majority of answers before replying. 'When there were potatoes to pick, we'd go and help Mirko's brother in the field. It was important for the children to have experience of hard work, because it's very difficult, it's hard on your back, your legs, everything. It's painful. 'But he really enjoyed mowing grass in the garden, washing the car and bicycles. They had their jobs at home. It was a rule that the kids had to clean their bikes before races — it couldn't be dirty.' But before it was a bike, it was a unicycle. Tadej and his brother, Tilen, used to unicycle over to the family farm on those summer days, having been inspired by a neighbour and quickly growing obsessed. Advertisement 'They all loved unicycling,' remembers Marjeta. 'They were really good at it — they'd go down steps on them, up steps, too, and they'd ride along the tops of walls in the city. They'd jump up and jump down. I was never worried about them because they said it was safer than a normal bicycle. 'The first time they went training on a normal bicycle, I rode with them, but they were too strong. I didn't want to be a scared mum. I let them go.' This moment — Tadej's first proper ride — was not some preordained moment, a familial masterplan. He was simply following his older brother. As Marjeta explains, 'Tadej was always really talented at sport, while Tilen was more intellectual. He was very good at playing chess. He was also good at sports, but as soon as Tadej started to become as good as him, he would quit the sport. He started playing football. Then Tadej started playing football. 'Two years later, he went to play basketball. But then, Miha Koncilja, his first cycling coach, came to ask if Tilen could join the club. He said yes. So Tadej immediately wanted to do cycling, too, so he skipped basketball. 'Tilen wasn't as single-minded. He was always thinking: 'Is this work worth it? What if it doesn't work out?' But Tadej didn't do this. He went all in.' Their heroes were the Schleck brothers, Andy and Frank, whom he and Tilen looked up to as fellow racing siblings. 'Tilen was a very good rider, very fast,' Pogačar told UK newspaper The Times back in 2021. 'He always found a way to beat me. Every village sign, we sprinted to, and he won. Then, one day, when he was 16 or 17, (he) didn't want to do it any more. 'You are brothers, you have the same parents, the same talent. And there are little things that make a difference and you don't even know what they are. My brother is now the logistics guy for a haulage company in Ljubljana and enjoys his job. I grew up knowing he was better than me.' Advertisement It meant things would get competitive. The Pogačar household was filled with games, particularly self-imagined ones, along with the more typical cards and chess. When there were the typical moments of bickering, Marjeta says Tadej was desperate to play peacemaker. 'He was funny since his childhood when he was really young, maybe one or two years old,' she says. 'Sometimes he'd dance or sing, but he was sometimes also a little naughty, with his siblings, little things. 'But he was always cheering us up. Whenever anyone in the family was tired or there was tension, he wanted to break that feeling. He wanted us to have fun, to make the reconciliation. 'But it's very important in playing games to learn how to win and how to lose. He learned this also. He wasn't angry as long as he'd done his best. And after he finished second to Vingegaard, perhaps these habits — how to win, how to lose — came from his childhood into his life now, his current career.' Pogačar won plaudits for how he dealt with losing successive Tours in 2022 and 2023, acknowledging his rival's superiority. 'There couldn't be a better way to lose the Tour de France than this,' he said, having failed to shake Vingegaard from his wheel in 2022. 'I gave it all today, thinking of the GC. I will leave the race with no regrets.' As well as his experience of childhood games, perhaps another reason behind this, Marjeta suggests, is because as a young rider, Pogačar did not do much winning. 'I noticed he was very talented at sports when he was two years old,' she says. 'He taught himself to walk, he was very good at football. He could point to a spot on the wall as a small child and hit it exactly there. But we also noticed he found solutions that weren't necessarily obvious; imaginative ones. But at cycling? We didn't know immediately that he was talented. Advertisement 'When he went to race in Italy or in Berlin as a 16-year-old, we noticed he was doing quite well, but he didn't really begin to win until late. He was very small, a very tiny boy, and he wasn't successful against the bigger riders. He did everything he could to beat the older kids even with his disadvantage, but wasn't always disappointed if he wasn't first. 'It meant he didn't feel pressure to win — because he was never winning before.' For them, it was not until he was a 19-year-old riding in the Tour de l'Avenir that they quite realised the stakes at which their son was contending. Finally, he had begun to grow nerves. 'The first time we saw him a little afraid was before the Tour de l'Avenir, because there were some Colombian guys that were very good at racing. So I remember we spoke about it. I didn't know what this race meant to young cyclists. 'He explained it was like the Tour de France for young riders. And so I had to encourage him a little bit — to have faith in himself and to do his best.' Pogačar need not have worried. He won the GC ahead of Thymen Arensman and Gino Mader, with Colombian rivals Ivan Ramiro Sosa and Cristian Camilo Munoz down in sixth and 18th, respectively. At just 19, he could have competed in the Tour de l'Avenir for another four years. Joxean Fernandez Matxin, Pogačar's current sports manager at UAE Team Emirates, first saw Pogačar in 2017, back when he was scouting for the rival Soudal-Quickstep team. 'He was at the Radenska Llubljana team,' Matxin says. 'I went to watch a race as a scout at Quickstep, and I remember the place in Montauban. I remember Tadej arriving at this race alongside two experienced riders, a 32-year-old and a 34-year-old, and in the last 300 metres, he attacked to try to win. He got out the saddle, he didn't win, but you knew he was stronger, you knew he was at another level. Advertisement 'And after, I went to speak with Tadej. And I remember his laces and his shoes. His laces were just the laces of a normal person, his shoes were maybe four years old. And in that moment, I understood that this was a super good rider because there was so much margin for growth. He was chill, he wasn't professional — and we knew he was a pure talent.' UAE had their own eyes on Pogačar, who they signed to their development team just ahead of the Tour de l'Avenir. The next year, Matxin arrived at UAE, reuniting the pair. As a junior, Pogačar looked up to the likes of Irishman Dan Martin and Italian Fabio Aru — there are elements of both Martin's explosivity and Aru's ability on long, sustained efforts in Pogačar's riding, though in truth, he has now far eclipsed both. Just two years passed between the Tour de l'Avenir and his maiden Tour de France title in 2020 — only Egan Bernal has matched that feat. Incidentally, the Colombian's two victories took place in 2017 and 2019, the year before Pogačar in each case. Though Pogačar had won three stages of the previous year's Vuelta a España, his rise to Tour de France winner was meteoric, but the success brought one of the major challenges of his young career. His win came in dramatic circumstances, overturning the lead of fellow Slovenian Primoz Roglic on the final racing day, a time trial up La Planche des Belles Filles. 'In Slovenia, it was sometimes difficult after his first Tour victory in 2020 because he beat Primoz,' says Marjeta. 'And there were many sad moments around this. Tadej wasn't happy that it played out this way; neither were we. 'Many people were angry with Tadej and sent him messages that weren't nice. But Tadej hadn't done anything — he hadn't hurt him, he didn't steal victory from Primoz. He was just stronger on the very last stage; it was a race.' But in dealing with this, Pogačar could take advantage of his ability to switch on and off. 'When he's with his teammates, he's dancing, he's funny,' says Matxin, from outside the UAE bus. 'But then he takes his helmet. Click. It's another Tadej.' 'He has a great ability to know when he has to concentrate and when he can take it easier,' adds Marjeta. 'I think he separates those things very well.' Advertisement Pogačar looks joyful in the race, but that is because concentration on the race is the joy itself, existence in the moment, the cut and thrust of tactics and the flight up the road. Even now, midway through his career, he insists on doing races for enjoyment, such as his desire to ride Paris-Roubaix earlier this year, which typically would have been considered far too dangerous for any Tour contender. He was on the wheel of eventual winner Mathieu van der Poel before overcooking a corner with 38km to go. 'It has been difficult in the past,' Pogačar told The Athletic in Lille. 'People always have opinions no matter what you say, no matter what you do. You cannot please everyone. But since I stopped paying so much attention, my life has been better. I'll try to speak with a smile on my face and try not to care too much about whatever happens next.' This Tour de France, Visma Lease-a-Bike began to target Pogačar mentally for the first time. There have been quarrels in feed zones, while the Slovenian was sufficiently antagonised by Visma's tactics after stage six to publicly criticise them, while he called Vingegaard and Matteo Jorgenson's attacks 'annoying' after stage 10. 'We try to put him under pressure day after day,' said Visma's Victor Campenaerts after that stage. 'Sometimes I have the impression he gets irritated, or his team gets irritated, because we try so hard.' Would their tactics work? Visma had their answer two days later, as Pogačar gained over two minutes on Vingegaard up the Hautacam. 'Riding the bike these last couple of years is like a fairytale to me,' he said from its summit. 'While I'm enjoying this sufferfest with the fans on the road, I can still go deep and have this level, this shape. 'I think once this fire goes out, I will probably decline, but right now is the peak of my career, for the last two or three years. I'll try to hold it as long as I can.'
France 24
09-07-2025
- Sport
- France 24
Three-time Tour de France winner LeMond receives Congressional Gold Medal
In a ceremony at the US Capitol, House Speaker Mike Johnson praised the 64-year-old LeMond as "a model of sportsmanship, excellence and integrity" in bestowing the medal, which is conferred by an act of Congress. "It is the highest honor that we can bestow in this institution," Johnson said. "It honors citizens whose contributions have shaped our country, enriched our history and lifted the spirits of the American people." LeMond won his groundbreaking first Tour de France title in 1986. Shot in a hunting accident in 1987, he made a comeback and won the Tour again in 1989 and 1990 -- claiming his second victory in '89 by just eight seconds over Frenchman Laurent Fignon in a race thrillingly decided in a final-stage time trial. LeMond, who also won road race world titles in 1983 and 1989, recalled that as a teenager in 1970s America he had not even realized that cycling was a competitive sport until he saw a racing peloton pass his house one day. "After winning my first race, I became passionately obsessed with cycling," he recalled. He moved to Europe at the age of 19 to pursue his dream. LeMond spoke warmly of the friendships he forged in France, with teammates, technicians and fans. "I stand here knowing this honor isn't mine alone," LeMond said. "It belongs to every supporter, every family member and to all the extraordinary Americans whose courage and sacrifice made my life and career possible." LeMond is the only American Tour de France winner after Lance Armstrong and Floyd Landis were stripped of their titles in doping scandals. Since retiring, he has been a strong anti-doping advocate. Congress voted to award the medal to LeMond in 2020, but the Covid pandemic delayed its presentation. Few sports figures have received the honor. The list includes Olympian Jesse Owens, boxer Joe Louis, golf great Jack Nicklaus and tennis legend Billie Jean King among a handful of others.
Yahoo
09-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Remember Greg LeMond? Tour de France legend to reap Congress's highest civilian honor.
Maybe you've heard of Greg LeMond. Maybe you haven't. And if his name doesn't ring familiar, maybe it should. LeMond, 64, was the first American cyclist to win the Tour de France, one of the two or three most-watched sporting events in the world. And with the doping-era disqualifications of Lance Armstrong and Floyd Landis, LeMond is the only American who has won the Tour. Advertisement On July 9, LeMond will visit the Capitol to receive the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian honor Congress can bestow, on par with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Congress approved the medal in 2020, but the pandemic forced a delay in awarding it. Since 1776, Congress has awarded only a few Gold Medals to athletes. Honorees include boxer Joe Louis, tennis giant Billie Jean King, Olympian Jesse Owens and golfer Jack Nicklaus. Why is Congress giving Greg LeMond a medal? In the United States, cycling is mostly recreational. In Europe and much of the rest of the world, it is a major competitive sport, and LeMond is one of its legends. Advertisement LeMond was a once-in-a-generation talent. Born in California in 1961, he entered competitive cycling in the 1970s amid a modest American cycling boom, an era lovingly captured in the classic 1979 film 'Breaking Away.' In a sense, Greg LeMond's story is a real-life 'Breaking Away.' In the underground competitive cycling scene of his era, LeMond was so much better than everyone else that officials let him race against older boys. He beat them anyway. LeMond decamped to Europe in 1980 and soon proved himself the most talented young rider on that continent, against much stiffer competition. The rest of LeMond's career unfolded with the sort of high drama you mostly see in movies. (In fact, actor Ben Stiller is said to be making a movie about LeMond's 1986 Tour victory.) Advertisement In the summer of '86, LeMond captivated the cycling world by claiming America's first Tour win, an epic duel against another all-time great, Frenchman Bernard Hinault. Bernard Hinault of France in action during Tour de France, followed by Greg Lemond of US. July 25, 1986. All of France seemed set on denying LeMond his victory: Fans, journalists, fellow cyclists and even LeMond's own teammates, not to mention Hinault himself. Not for nothing did Hinault earn the nickname 'The Badger.' The late Richard Moore, a Scottish writer, recounted the 1986 Tour in a classic cycling book, 'Slaying the Badger.' LeMond staged one of sport's greatest comebacks LeMond should have gone on to win the Tour in 1987 and 1988: He was that much better than the rest of the peloton. Advertisement But in April 1987, a few months before the next Tour, LeMond nearly died. He was turkey-hunting on a family ranch in rural California. A relative shot him by accident, piercing his body with dozens of shotgun pellets. By the time a helicopter delivered him to a hospital, LeMond had almost bled out. After the accident, LeMond could barely walk, let alone pedal. And yet, over the next two years, he staged a spectacular comeback. He entered races he could not finish, then finished races he could not win. By the summer of 1989, LeMond had regained his form. He entered the Tour that year and quickly proved he was capable of winning it again. The 1989 Tour pitted LeMond against another Frenchman: Laurent Fignon, a two-time Tour winner who was gunning for his third victory. Tour de France leader Laurent Fignon of France (R) smiles as he rides in front of Greg LeMond of the U.S. during the 11th stage of the Tour de France, July 12, 1989. The 1986 edition of cycling's premier event had been a great Tour. The 1989 edition would be widely remembered as the greatest Tour of all time. Advertisement The Tour de France plays out over 21 days of racing and covers more than 2,000 miles. Each cyclist's time is recorded at the end of every stage. The rider with the shortest overall time at the end wins the race. By the finish, the victor often commands a lead of five or 10 minutes. And that's why the 1989 Tour captivated the world: It was really, really close. After the second stage of racing, LeMond led Fignon by 51 seconds in cumulative time. After Stage 5, Fignon led by five seconds. After Stage 10, LeMond led by seven seconds. And so on. By the final day of racing, July 23, 1989, Fignon held a 50-second lead over LeMond. The last stage was an individual time trial: A race against the clock, each cyclist going all out for 15 miles, riding alone into Paris as the stopwatch ticked. Advertisement The course was short and flat, and almost no one thought LeMond had a chance of riding it 50 seconds faster than Fignon to claim victory on the Champs-Élysées. The final moments of that time trial delivered some of the most exhilarating live sports ever broadcast. Both Fignon and LeMond rode the race of their lives, but LeMond rode faster. At the finish, he had beaten Fignon by a margin of eight seconds. In more than a century of racing, the 1989 Tour remains the closest ever. LeMond had staged one of the greatest comebacks in the history of American sports. 'The True King of American Cycling' Many years later, I wrote a biography of LeMond, with the 1989 Tour as its centerpiece. It published in 2018 as 'The Comeback: Greg LeMond, the True King of American Cycling, and a Legendary Tour de France.' Cover image for 'The Comeback: Greg LeMond, the True King of American Cycling, and a Legendary Tour de France.' I hoped LeMond might one day become as well-known as Lance Armstrong, the Texan cyclist who won a record seven Tours between 1999 and 2005. Armstrong was perhaps the most celebrated athlete in America until a doping investigation brought him down. Advertisement Shortly after my book came out, I received an email from U.S. Rep. Mike Thompson, a Democrat from California, LeMond's birthplace. Thompson was a cyclist. He had read my book, and he wanted to honor LeMond. Some months later, Thompson introduced legislation to award LeMond the Congressional Gold Medal. It was an uphill battle, but Thompson collected the necessary support: a supermajority, two-thirds of the House and two-thirds of the Senate. On December 4, 2020, President Donald Trump signed the Greg LeMond Congressional Gold Medal Act into law. 'More than any other cyclist in our history,' Thompson said on the House floor, 'Greg LeMond was the epitome of the 'Breaking Away' culture: A young kid on a bike, trying to do things no American had ever done.' This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Congress to give Greg LeMond its highest civilian honor. Who is he?
Glasgow Times
06-07-2025
- Sport
- Glasgow Times
20 years since Armstrong's seventh Tour win, so has cycling changed?
It was hard to argue. 20 years ago this month, Lance Armstrong won his seventh consecutive Tour de France. The American's victory was his final Tour win in a career that was defined by the greatest cycling race on the planet. Armstrong was hailed as a phenomenon; all other riders made the three weeks of the Tour seem like purgatory whereas with Armstrong, the harder the race became, the more he embraced, and even relished, the pain. He appeared to be floating serenely up climbs when other riders could barely turn the pedals any longer. Following that remarkable seventh victory, Armstrong, who is a cancer-survivor which only serve to make his achievement all the more remarkable, delivered a speech that was just as memorable as his racing. The American had long been the subject of much innuendo and, at times, outright accusations about potential doping which was something he consistently and ferociously denied. And so, standing in the yellow jersey on the podium on the Champs Elysées, Armstrong delivered a breath-taking monologue: 'I'll say to the people who don't believe in cycling, the cynics and the sceptics. I'm sorry for you. I'm sorry that you can't dream big. I'm sorry you don't believe in miracles. But this is one hell of a race. This is a great sporting event and you should stand around and believe it. You should believe in these athletes, and you should believe in these people. I'll be a fan of the Tour de France for as long as I live. And there are no secrets - this is a hard sporting event and hard work wins it. Vive Le Tour.' Lance Armstrong won his seventh Tour de France in 2005 (Image: Robert Laberge/ Getty Images) If Armstrong's words had been genuine, this 20-year anniversary would have merited a considerable celebration. Except we all know what has happened in the past two decades. Armstrong retired in the immediate aftermath of that seventh Tour victory but returned to cycling in 2009. It is, he now admits, his biggest regret. His comeback triggered a sequence of events that would ultimately lead to the now infamous Oprah Winfrey interview, during which he admitted to having doped for the entirety of his career. The result of his admission was for all his seven Tour victories to be stripped from him, he was forced to pay out millions of dollars in legal fees and settlements and his reputation was trashed, with the American branded a 'disgrace' by everyone and anyone. Armstrong's legacy, and cycling in the post-Armstrong era, remains complicated. The American has far from disappeared into the shadows, as many had expected post-doping confession. He hosts a successful podcast, runs a bike shop in his native Austin, Texas and was involved in an enthralling documentary about his life and career (and which was far more truthful than his autobiography, which was written pre-Oprah). While there are many who still despise Armstrong for his cheating, there are others, and I include myself in this group, who feel less vehemently about the American these days, realising he was more a symptom of a much wider doping problem than the problem itself. It just so happened he cheated bigger and better than his peers. Cycling, don't forget, was absolutely overrun with dopers in the 1990s and 2000s, with Armstrong just one of literally dozens, if not hundreds of elite riders who were systematically doping. (Image: Getty Images) Twenty years on, though, where is cycling now? In a fairytale world, Armstrong's confessions, and the confessions of many of his peers who also admitted to doping around that time, would have acted as a trigger to clean-up cycling meaning we could believe everything we now see from riders. This wish is, there can be little doubt, far too pollyanna to be accurate. So two decades on from the final victory by the biggest doping cheat in the sport's history, how clean in cycling? And how much of this year's Tour de France, which began yesterday, can we believe? Cycling is, I'm confident in saying, cleaner than it was 20 years ago. No longer are there scandals on the scale of the Festina Affair, which revealed systematic doping by the Festina team and nearly brought the Tour to its knees. But just because nothing quite as dramatic as the Festina Affair has happened in recent years, no one should be fooled into thinking this means cycling has eradicated doping entirely. Since Armstrong's historic seventh victory, doping has still never been far from anyone's thoughts when it comes to cycling. Occasional riders have been caught for taking banned substances, but the numbers testing positive remain low. There have been specific incidents which have raised significant questions about doping within cycling, most notably the Team Sky 'jiffy bag' scandal, as well as questions being raised over the British team's use of TUEs. During Team Sky's dominance of the sport between 2010 and 2018, there was considerable scepticism, none of it proven it must be pointed out, that Team Sky weren't doing things 'by-the-book'. Outwith the criticism directed at Team Sky, there remains a general unease amongst many observers about what we're seeing. This is as a direct result of the times, power outputs and stats the modern-day top riders are producing. How, if these riders are clean, are they riding faster than Armstrong et al which was, we were told, cycling's darkest era and one which would never be replicated? It's a reasonable question, and one which no one within the sport seems to be able to satisfactorily answer. Some of the gains are reasonably explained by the improvements in sports science, nutrition, training, aerodynamics and equipment. But it's hard to attribute all the improvements and broken records to these advancements, which are marginal gains and nothing more. Perhaps the sport is just moving on. Just as happens in every sport, the next generation is, invariably, better than the last. No rider gets into the sport believing they will end up shoving a needle into their arm. But, I'm afraid, the riders in Armstrong's era didn't start off thinking they'd end up that way either. I don't believe doping is systematic within cycling these days in the way is was when Armstrong was winning - over the next three weeks at the 2025 Tour, I'll be holding onto the belief that most of the riders are clean athletes who got onto the start line because of talent, hard work and nothing else. Unfortunately, though, the crazy-fast times and seemingly super-human climbing abilities make it hard to believe entirely in what we'll be watching over the next three weeks. Cycling is, I am certain, cleaner now than in Armstrong's era. It's also, I'd bet, cleaner than a lot of other sports. But entirely clean? Probably not.
