Has anyone won the Tour de France drug free?

Arequipa

Hi! Hope your enjoying the beautiful weather.
I was thinking recently about the Alberto Contador saga. On twitter he's thanking people for all their support etc... Is a bit sickening!
When you look at the difficulty of the Tour de France & the speed the tip riders are achieving & unbelievable recovery rates. Lance is undoubtedly an incredible athlete, but I have my doubts! Pantani was a great talent but a pharmaceutical experiment... Even when you go back to Stephen Roche's incredible comeback against Pedro Delgado; I have more doubts!

Do you think any of the top 3-5 riders in the last 10-20 years were drug free?
I think they're all at it.
Watched Greg LeMond describing how he was incredibly fit; but used to pace himself to be able to drink from his water bottle in the mountains, whereas now the riders are belting up the mountains with time enough to chat or nearly text on the way up; he found it all highly suspect!

Arequipa.

TinyExplosions

LeMond is possibly the only clean rider in recent memory to win, along with possibly Sastre

RobFowl

TinyExplosions wrote: »

LeMond is possibly the only clean rider in recent memory to win, along with possibly Sastre

From the ranks of grand tour winners it's largely thought Greg Lemond, Andy Hampten (Giro) and Eric Caritoux (Vuelta) were clean winners.

Charly Mottet was supposidly clean as well but never won a grand tour.

Every other winner I'm aware of has had doping allegations at least.

TinyExplosions

RobFowl wrote: »

Every other winner I'm aware of has had doping allegations at least.

Has there been any allegations about Sastre, other than being with ONCE and being teammates at CSC with Hamilton and Basso -ie, was there any specfic allegations at his door? (am genuinely curious, as I thought he was regarded as pretty clean!)

drogdub

TinyExplosions wrote: »

Has there been any allegations about Sastre, other than being with ONCE and being teammates at CSC with Hamilton and Basso -ie, was there any specfic allegations at his door? (am genuinely curious, as I thought he was regarded as pretty clean!)

As far as I know Sastre is called Mr Clean by the Spainish media and the media know more than they write, so if they are prepared to call him Mr Clean then he probably is clean

cormpat

TinyExplosions wrote: »

Has there been any allegations about Sastre, other than being with ONCE and being teammates at CSC with Hamilton and Basso -ie, was there any specfic allegations at his door? (am genuinely curious, as I thought he was regarded as pretty clean!)

Don't think so. I think his brother or brother in law died of a drug overdose (recreational not performance enhancing) a few years back.

RobFowl

TinyExplosions wrote: »

Has there been any allegations about Sastre, other than being with ONCE and being teammates at CSC with Hamilton and Basso -ie, was there any specfic allegations at his door? (am genuinely curious, as I thought he was regarded as pretty clean!)

The association with Once (for 5 years) and the fact that his team doctor there was one Dr Fuentes is the main source of concern.
Riis as a DS makes a lot of people uncomfortable and his new team Geoxx is the latest incarnation of the Saunier Duval team which spawned Ricco and is still owned by Mauro Gianetti.
Nothing else though.

TinyExplosions

RobFowl wrote: »

The association with Once (for 5 years) and the fact that his team doctor there was one Dr Fuentes is the main source of concern.
Riis as a DS makes a lot of people uncomfortable and his new team Geoxx is the latest incarnation of the Saunier Duval team which spawned Ricco and is still owned by Mauro Gianetti.
Nothing else though.

That's what I figured, that it was more or a "guilt by association" then anything he'd done himself, but it does raise the odd doubt or two I guess

petethedrummer

drogdub wrote: »

As far as I know Sastre is called Mr Clean by the Spainish media and the media know more than they write, so if they are prepared to call him Mr Clean then he probably is clean

I think Mr Clean is more of a reference to his personality, he's a very clean cut family man. He's not an outspoken critic of doping like Mr Propre. Fairly sure he toes the Omerta line.

There's some innuendo about his final TT in 2008. It was widely expect that Evans would overcome the deficit but didn't. There's not much other than that.

Beasty

The whole purpose of this thread is to speculate about possible dopers, which is against the Charter

7. Doping

No speculation over potential doping offenders - Comment on information (including press articles) in the public domain is OK, but allegations must be verifiable with information that is in the public domain.