The 2003 Tour de France was a multiple stage bicycle race held from 5 to 27 July, and the 90th edition of the Tour de France. It has no overall winner—although American cyclist Lance Armstrong originally won the event, the United States Anti-Doping Agency announced in August 2012 that they had disqualified Armstrong from all his results since 1998, including his seven Tour de France wins from 1999 to 2005; the Union Cycliste Internationale has confirmed this verdict.
Jan Ullrich is a German former professional road bicycle racer. Ullrich won gold and silver medals in the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney. He won the 1999 Vuelta a España and the HEW Cyclassics in front of a home crowd in Hamburg in 1997. He had podium finishes in the hilly classic Clásica de San Sebastián. His victorious ride in the 1997 Tour de France led to a bicycle boom in Germany. He retired in February 2007.
Tyler Hamilton is an American former professional road bicycle racer. He is the only American rider to win one of the five Monuments of cycling, taking Liège–Bastogne–Liège in 2003. Hamilton became a professional cyclist in 1995 with the US Postal Service cycling team. He was a teammate of Lance Armstrong during the 1999, 2000 and 2001 Tours de France, where Armstrong won the general classification. He was a key asset for Armstrong, being a very good climber as well as time-trialist. Hamilton appeared at the 2000 and 2004 Summer Olympics. In 2004, he won a gold medal at the individual time trial. The first doping test after his Olympic victory gave a positive result, but because the backup sample was frozen, no doping offence could be proven. After he failed further doping tests at the 2004 Vuelta a España, Hamilton was suspended for two years from the sport.
The Critérium du Dauphiné, before 2010 known as the Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré, is an annual cycling road race in the Dauphiné region in the southeast of France. The race is run over eight days during the first half of June. It is part of the UCI World Tour calendar and counts as one of the foremost races in the lead-up to the Tour de France in July, along with the Tour de Suisse in the latter half of June.
Floyd Landis is an American former professional road racing cyclist. He finished first at the 2006 Tour de France, and would have been the third non-European winner in the event's history, but was disqualified after testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs. The competition was ultimately won by Óscar Pereiro.
Bob "Bobke" Roll is an American former professional cyclist, author, and television sports commentator. He was a member of the 7-Eleven Cycling Team until 1990 and competed for the Motorola Cycling Team in 1991. In 1992 Roll moved to Greg LeMond's Z team and added mountain biking to his racing accomplishments. Roll continued racing mountain bikes professionally through 1998. Roll is known in the cycling world, and to his global cable television fans, as "Bobke".
Philip Alexander Liggett is an English commentator and journalist who covers professional cycling.
Johan Bruyneel is a Belgian former professional road bicycle racer and a former directeur sportif for UCI ProTour team RadioShack–Nissan, and U.S. Postal Service, a US-based UCI ProTour cycling team. On October 25, 2018, the World Anti Doping Agency imposed a lifetime ban on Bruyneel for his role in a doping scandal that also saw Lance Armstrong stripped of his seven Tour de France titles.
The 2000 Tour de France was a multiple stage bicycle race held from 1 to 23 July, and the 87th edition of the Tour de France. It has no overall winner—although American cyclist Lance Armstrong originally won the event, the United States Anti-Doping Agency announced on 24 August 2012 that they had disqualified Armstrong from all his results since 1 August 1998, including his seven Tour de France wins from 1999 to 2005; the Union Cycliste Internationale confirmed the result.
There have been allegations of doping in the Tour de France since the race began in 1903. Early Tour riders consumed alcohol and used ether, among other substances, as a means of dulling the pain of competing in endurance cycling. Riders began using substances as a means of increasing performance rather than dulling the senses, and organizing bodies such as the Tour and the International Cycling Union (UCI), as well as government bodies, enacted policies to combat the practice.
L.A. Confidentiel: Les secrets de Lance Armstrong is a book by sports journalist Pierre Ballester and The Sunday Times sports correspondent David Walsh. The book contains circumstantial evidence of cyclist Lance Armstrong having used performance-enhancing drugs. The book has only been published in French.
Positively False is the autobiography by 2006 Tour de France champion Floyd Landis, published in June, 2007
It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life is a 2000 autobiographical book by American cyclist Lance Armstrong with Sally Jenkins.
Sally Jenkins is an American sports columnist and feature writer for The Washington Post. She was previously a senior writer for Sports Illustrated. She has been named the nation's top sports columnist by the AP sports editors four times and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2019. She is the author of a dozen books and received the National Press Foundation's chairman citation in 2017.
Lance Edward Armstrong is an American former professional road racing cyclist. Armstrong was stripped of his seven consecutive Tour de France titles from 1999 to 2005 after a doping investigation and his admission to using performance enhancing drugs.
For much of the second phase of his career, American cyclist Lance Armstrong faced constant allegations of doping. Armstrong consistently denied allegations of using performance enhancing drugs until a partial confession during a broadcast interview with Oprah Winfrey in January 2013.
Greg LeMond competed at a time when performance enhancing drugs were just beginning to impact his sport. Rumors of improprieties existed, including USA Cycling's blood doping at the 1984 LA Olympics and Francesco Moser's same measures prior to his 1984 assault on the hour record, but legalities were not sharply demarcated and the practice was not spoken of in the open. Considered one of the most talented cyclists of his generation, from his earliest days of professional cycling LeMond was strongly against taking performance enhancing drugs, largely on the basis of the health risks such practices posed. His career lacks the suspicious results that have tarnished his successors. His willingness to speak out against doping and those prominent individuals involved inadvertently linked him with the sport’s doping scandal controversies. In his opposition to fraud, corruption and what he saw as complicity on the part of cycling officials, LeMond became a lightning rod with the sports most prominent personalities.
The Lance Armstrong doping case was a major doping investigation that led to retired road racing cyclist Lance Armstrong being stripped of his seven Tour de France titles, along with one Olympic medal, and his eventual admission to using performance-enhancing drugs. The United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) portrayed Armstrong as the ringleader of what it called "the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen."
Seven Deadly Sins: My Pursuit of Lance Armstrong is a sports book written by Sunday Times journalist David Walsh, which released on December 13, 2012. In the book, Walsh writes about his 13-year fight to bring out the truth behind American cyclist Lance Armstrong's seven Tour de France wins, i.e. that Armstrong had used banned substances. Walsh was vindicated when Armstrong was stripped of all seven of his Tour titles and banned from sport for life on October 22, 2012. Armstrong's seven Tour wins are told to be his "seven deadly sins".
