Trek Bicycle Corporation is a bicycle and cycling product manufacturer and distributor under brand names Trek, Electra Bicycle Company, Bontrager, and Diamant Bikes. The company has previously manufactured bikes under the Gary Fisher, LeMond Racing Cycles, Klein, and Villiger Bikes brand names. With its headquarters in Waterloo, Wisconsin, Trek bicycles are marketed through 1,700 independently owned bicycle shops across North America, subsidiaries in Europe, Asia, South Africa, as well as distributors in 90 countries worldwide. Nearly all Trek bicycles are manufactured outside the United States, in countries including the Netherlands, Germany, Taiwan, and China.
Gregory James LeMond is an American former road racing cyclist. LeMond won the Tour de France three times and the Road Race World Championship twice, becoming the only American male to win the former.
L'Alpe d'Huez is a ski resort in Southeastern France at 1,250 to 3,330 metres. It is a mountain pasture in the central French Western Alps, in the commune of Huez, which is part of the Isère department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region.
The 2004 Tour de France was a multiple stage bicycle race held from 3 to 25 July, and the 91st 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 confirmed the result.
The Union Cycliste Internationale is the world governing body for sports cycling and oversees international competitive cycling events. The UCI is based in Aigle, Switzerland.
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 25 October 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.
Christophe Bassons is a French former professional road racing cyclist. His career ended when he spoke out about doping in the Tour de France.
Paul Kimmage is an Irish sports journalist and former amateur and professional road bicycle racer, who was road race champion of Ireland in 1981, and competed in the 1984 Olympic Games. He wrote for The Sunday Times newspaper and others, and published a number of books.
Time is a manufacturer of pedals and bicycles.
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.
David Joseph Walsh is an Irish sports journalist and chief sports writer for the British newspaper The Sunday Times. He is a four-time Irish Sportswriter of the Year and a three-time UK Sportswriter of the Year. Walsh was the key journalist in uncovering the doping program by Lance Armstrong and the US Postal Service Cycling Team, leading to a lifetime ban from cycling for Armstrong and being stripped of his seven Tour titles.
Litespeed is a U.S. bicycle manufacturer founded in 1986 in Ooltewah, Tennessee by David Lynskey. Litespeed makes titanium and carbon fiber frame road racing bicycles and mountain bikes. Titanium bicycle frames are famed for their ride quality. Litespeed, along with triathlon specific bicycle manufacturer Quintana Roo, is a subsidiary of the American Bicycle Group.
Merlin Metalworks, Inc. was a US company that pioneered in titanium bicycle design and construction. Merlin introduced the first titanium alloy mountain bike, oversized tubesets, s-bend chain and seat stays for mountain bikes. For road bikes, Merlin commercialized the first titanium butted tubing and many other innovations.
Hein Verbruggen was a Dutch sports administrator who was president of the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) from 1991 till 2005 and president of SportAccord from 2004 to 2013. He was an honorary member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) since 2008. Previously, he was a member of the IOC and Chairman of the Coordination Commission for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad in Beijing in 2008. He is highly suspected to have protected Lance Armstrong.
Edward Borysewicz, sometimes known as "Eddie B", was a cycling coach who brought the United States to world prominence, even though at first he barely spoke English. The US team, under his direction, won nine medals at the Olympic Games in Los Angeles in 1984. It was the first time Americans had won medals since 1912. Audrey McElmury won the World Road Cycling Championships in 1969, followed by Beth Heiden, in 1980.
Clark-Kent was a bicycle frame manufacturer based in Denver, Colorado. The name Clark-Kent was a hybrid of the names of the company owners, Pat Clark and Dean Kent, and had no connection with the alter ego of Superman beyond name recognition. Nor is it related in any way with Kent Bicycles of Parsippany, New Jersey.
Lance Edward Armstrong is an American former professional road racing cyclist. He achieved international fame for winning the Tour de France a record seven consecutive times from 1999 to 2005, but was stripped of his titles after an investigation into doping allegations, called the Lance Armstrong doping case, found that Armstrong used performance-enhancing drugs over his career. As a result, Armstrong is currently banned for life from all sanctioned bicycling events.
For much of the second phase of his career, American cyclist Lance Armstrong faced constant allegations of doping, including doping at the Tour de France and in the Lance Armstrong doping case. Armstrong vehemently denied allegations of using performance enhancing drugs for 13 years, until a confession during a broadcast interview with Oprah Winfrey in January 2013, when he finally admitted to all his cheating in sports, stating, “I view this situation as one big lie that I repeated a lot of times”.
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.
Samuel Abt is an American sports journalist and author who covered professional cycling for 31 years, publishing articles in the New York Times and International Herald Tribune, among others. He devoted much time to chronicling the careers of English-speaking riders, especially Lance Armstrong and Greg LeMond.
