Le Tour

Pogacar rode to glory in the 2020 and 2021 editions and he will join Louison Bobet, Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx and Miguel Indurain in a select group if he ...

Of all the riders who finished second to Armstrong during his reign, only 2002 runner-up Joseba Beloki does not have a doping offence to his name — and only since he was removed from the Operacion Puerto case by Spanish officials in 2006. Pollentier was duly ejected from the race in ignominy, leaving Bernard Hinault to win the first of his record-equalling five titles. Operacion Puerto, the still-ongoing investigation into doping in Spanish professional sports, saw Jan Ullrich and Ivan Basso among a number of riders banned from the 2006 race. The grim picture painted by Kimmage only became bleaker with the emergence of erythropoietin, a drug used to increase red blood cell production in anaemia sufferers. Although his official cause of death was "heart failure caused by exhaustion", authorities determined that the combination of drugs and alcohol in his system had impaired his judgement and allowed him to push his body beyond its capabilities. Their examination revealed an elaborate system of tubes under the rider's shorts and jersey, connected to a condom filled with 'clean' urine. Merckx was one of those who fell foul at a time when the scientists fleetingly caught up with the athletes. Drug testing became more widespread in the aftermath of the tragedy, but this simply ramped up the now decades-long spectacle of riders attempting to stay ahead of the testers by any means necessary. In 1949, the year he claimed the first of his two Tour successes, Italian rider Fausto Coppi was asked by a French radio station if he took la bomba — a heady combination of amphetamines, cola and caffeine. Upon Simpson's insistence, his team put him back in the saddle, only for him to fall again less than half a kilometre up the road. A police helicopter took the rider to Avignon Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. The trio proceeded to produce boxes of pills before Francis Pellissier added: "The truth is that we keep going on dynamite."