Doping & Le Tour de France: Lance Armstrong was far from alone

Guardian, UK - When French newspaper Le Monde, suggested an interview to Lance Armstrong a few months ago, his initial response was "fuck off" before realizing "it was a bloody good idea".

Perhaps one reason for his change of heart was the opportunity to explain to Le Monde's readers that winning the Tour de France seven times would have remained a dream without the assistance of a few tricks that he believes are of the trade: doping.

Armstrong's argument rests on prevalence. It would be foolish for him to suggest that he would not be the strongest cyclist if none of the 186 cyclists he rode with used doping. Instead, he is arguing that the odds would be impossibly stacked against him if he were to compete against others without using the same performance enhancers they had.

To test whether the 'winning would be impossible' claim has any truth, we've tried to find the facts on how many of the men cycle in the Tour de France with a little extra je ne sais quoi. 1 in 3 test positive

That's the shocking statistic to emerge from the site cyclisme-dopage.com where they've collected statistics starting from 1968. The year isn't totally arbitrary - an anti-doping law was only passed in France in 1965.

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