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.
Gregory James LeMond is an American former professional road racing cyclist, entrepreneur, and anti-doping advocate. A two-time winner of the Road Race World Championship and a three-time winner of the Tour de France, LeMond is considered by many to be the greatest American cyclist of all time, one of the great all-round cyclists of the modern era, and an icon of the sport's globalisation.
The United States Anti-Doping Agency is a non-profit, non-governmental 501(c)(3) organization and the national anti-doping organization (NADO) for the United States. To protect clean competition and the integrity of sport and prevent doping in the United States with a performance-enhancing substance, the USADA provides education, leads scientific initiatives, conducts testing, and oversees the results management process. Headquartered in Colorado Springs, Colorado, USADA is a signatory to the World Anti-Doping Code, which harmonizes anti-doping practices around the world and is widely considered the basis for the strongest and strictest anti-doping programs to prevent doping in sport.
Filippo Simeoni is an Italian former racing cyclist and the 2008 Italian road race champion. Simeoni won two stages in the Vuelta a España in 2001 and 2003, and the 2008 Italian National Road Race Championship.
Levi Leipheimer is an American former professional road racing cyclist. He was twice US national champion, winning the time trial title in 1999 and the road race in 2007, and is an Olympic medalist. Leipheimer was born and raised in Butte, Montana and resides in Santa Rosa, California. He is the patron of the widely attended King Ridge GranFondo, a mass participation ride in Sonoma County.
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.
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.
Michele Ferrari is an Italian physician, cycling coach and author, who is mostly known for his role in supplying bicycle racers with performance-enhancing drugs, notably EPO. His most famous client was Lance Armstrong.
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.
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.
It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life is a 2000 autobiographical book by American cyclist Lance Armstrong with Sally Jenkins.
The Tour of Ireland was a bicycle stage race held in August, which ran for 35 editions over a 56-year period. Irish rider Seán Kelly recorded the most wins, four.
Lance Edward Armstrong is an American former professional road racing cyclist. Regarded as a sports icon for winning the Tour de France seven consecutive times from 1999 to 2005, he was later stripped of all his titles when an investigation revealed that he was the key figure in a wide-ranging doping conspiracy called the Lance Armstrong doping case.
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 and angrily 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.
The Lance Armstrong doping case was a major doping investigation that led to retired American road racing cyclist Lance Armstrong being stripped of his seven consecutive 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."
The Armstrong Lie is a 2013 American documentary film directed by Alex Gibney about the cyclist Lance Armstrong. Originally titled The Road Back, the film takes its name from "Le Mensonge Armstrong", the headline of the August 23, 2005 issue of the French newspaper L'Équipe. The film was screened out of competition at the 70th Venice International Film Festival and in the Special Presentation section at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival.
Vanessa O'Connell is an editor at Reuters and co-author of Wheelmen: Lance Armstrong, the Tour de France, and the Greatest Sports Conspiracy Ever. O'Connell previously worked as a reporter, writing award-winning stories on markets, business, legal and investigative topics at The Wall Street Journal. She also was part of the team of journalists behind a 2013 documentary featuring successful entrepreneurs including Sir Richard Branson, Carly Fiorina, and will.i.am.
Reed Albergotti is an American journalist and the co-author of Wheelmen: Lance Armstrong, the Tour de France, and the Greatest Sports Conspiracy Ever. This non-fiction book co-written with Vanessa O'Connell was published by Gotham Books on October 15, 2013. He has written about law and sports, including the doping scandal in American cycling.
Cycling on CBS is the de facto name for broadcasts of multiple-stage bicycle races produced by CBS Sports, the sports division of the CBS television network. CBS was notably the first American television network to provide coverage of the Tour de France. CBS also provided coverage of Paris–Roubaix during the 1980s.
