Stephen Roche is an Irish former professional road racing cyclist. In a 13-year professional career, he peaked in 1987, becoming the second of only two cyclists to win the Triple Crown of victories in the Tour de France and the Giro d'Italia general classification, plus the World road race championship, the first being Eddy Merckx. Roche's rise coincided with that of fellow Irishman Sean Kelly.
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.
Raymond Reardon is a Welsh retired professional snooker player. He turned professional in 1967 aged 35 and dominated the sport in the 1970s, winning the World Snooker Championship six times and more than a dozen other tournaments. Reardon was World Champion in 1970, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976 and 1978, and runner-up in 1982. He won the inaugural Pot Black tournament in 1969, the 1976 Masters and the 1982 Professional Players Tournament.
John James 'Sean' Kelly is an Irish former professional road bicycle racer, one of the most successful road cyclists of the 1980s, and one of the finest Classics riders of all time. From becoming a professional in 1977 until his retirement in 1994, he won 193 professional races, including nine Monument Classics, Paris–Nice a record seven years consecutively and the first UCI Road World Cup in 1989. Kelly won one Grand Tour, the 1988 Vuelta a España, and four green jerseys in the Tour de France. He achieved multiple victories in the Giro di Lombardia, Milan–San Remo, Paris–Roubaix and Liège–Bastogne–Liège, as well as three runners-up placings in the only Monument he failed to win, the Tour of Flanders. Other victories include the Grand Prix des Nations and stage races, the Critérium International, Tour de Suisse, Tour of the Basque Country and Volta a Catalunya.
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.
The William Hill Sports Book of the Year is an annual British sports literary award sponsored by bookmaker William Hill. The award is dedicated to rewarding excellence in sports writing. It was first awarded in 1989, and was devised by Graham Sharpe of William Hill, and John Gaustad, founder of the Sports Pages bookshop. As of 2020, the prize for winning the award is £30,000 and a leather-bound copy of their book. Each of the shortlisted authors receives £3,000.
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.
Nicolas Roche is an Irish cyclist, who competes in gravel cycling for his own NR GRVL team. He is also a former professional road bicycle racer, who rode professionally between 2005 and 2021 for seven different teams.
Daniel John Martin is a British-Irish former professional road racing cyclist, who rode professionally between 2008 and 2021 for the Cannondale–Garmin, Quick-Step Floors, UAE Team Emirates and Israel Start-Up Nation teams.
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.
Shane Lowry is an Irish professional golfer who plays on the European Tour and the PGA Tour. His notable achievements include winning the 2019 Open Championship, the Irish Open as an amateur in 2009, and the 2015 WGC-Bridgestone Invitational.
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 he used performance-enhancing drugs over his career. He is currently banned for life from all sanctioned bicycling events.
James H. Hibbard is an American road racing cyclist who competed for the Shaklee and HealthNet p/b Maxxis professional cycling Teams. He started racing at the Hellyer Park Velodrome in San Jose, California, as a junior in 1995, and competed through 2005.
Raymond Burns is a Northern Irish professional golfer.
Thomas Paul Fleetwood is an English professional golfer who plays on the PGA Tour and European Tour. He has won six times on the European Tour.
The French National Road Race Championship is a cycling race where the French cyclists decide who will become the champion for the year to come. The event was established in 1899, a professional championship was established in 1907 and the women's championship was established in 1951. Several additional categories were added later. The record for victories is by one of the best female cyclists, Jeannie Longo, who has so far won 20 road championships.
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”.
Rough Rider is a documentary film, first shown on RTÉ television on 28 July 2014. Filmed over two years, it is set against the fall of Lance Armstrong for doping offences in 2012 and follows the Irish journalist and former professional cyclist Paul Kimmage during the 2013 Tour de France, where he questions what is being done to free professional cycling from doping since the release in 1990 of his book Rough Ride. The film is directed by Adrian McCarthy.
Neil Martin is a British former cyclist. He competed at the 1980 Summer Olympics and the 1984 Summer Olympics. He now works as a team manager for under-23 cyclists within Cycling Ireland's High Performance Unit.
