Thirty years on, the grudge holds
Greg LeMond has never made a secret of how he feels about Lance Armstrong, and this week he said it all again. In an interview with French regional daily Le Telegramme, relayed Saturday by RMC Sport, the 65-year-old called Armstrong a “bad guy” and claimed he once wanted to kill him.
The history is well known. LeMond won the Tour de France in 1986, 1989 and 1990 and retired in 1994. Armstrong, banned for life in 2012, was stripped of his seven Tour titles from 1999 to 2005 for doping. LeMond says his mechanic, who also worked for Armstrong, told him everything in 2000, including the doping and the links with cycling’s governing body.
“He paid the UCI,” LeMond told the paper. Saying everyone dopes is one thing, he argued, but paying so as not to be tested is another.
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Threats and a promise
For LeMond the doping is not even the worst of it. What bothers him is how Armstrong treated people, and he recalled the day Armstrong threatened Marco Pantani on Mont Ventoux. He says the threats were aimed at him and at his family, and that he has stayed quiet publicly. He described the current period as a truce.
Those claims are LeMond’s own and come from one interview. He added that some of what happened cannot be said in public because it involves his family, but that he will tell it one day. Whatever that turns out to be, he said, it concerns events up to seven or eight years ago.
He also took aim at Johan Bruyneel, Armstrong’s former team boss at US Postal and Discovery Channel, accusing him of spreading rumours. At this year’s Tour, LeMond said, Bruyneel tried to compare Tadej Pogacar with Armstrong. LeMond rejected that, saying he has seen Armstrong’s VO2 max numbers and does not believe he could have won without heavy assistance. Pogacar, he added, is a “super talent”.
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