Greg LeMond won the Tour de France three times. He was the first American to do it. And depending on how you draw the line on the EPO era, he may have been the last clean rider to win it for over a decade. That's the context you need before you listen to a single word of the Roadman conversation — this is a man who watched the sport he loved get rewritten by chemistry and refused to stay quiet about it.
The interview was one of the most important I've ever done on the podcast. LeMond held nothing back. The Trek dispute alone is a story that would define most people's lives — he publicly questioned Lance Armstrong's relationship with Michele Ferrari, and Trek responded by terminating his bike brand licence. He lost millions. His name disappeared from the frames he'd helped make famous. And when I asked him if he'd do it again, there was no hesitation. He would.
What makes LeMond different from other anti-doping voices is that he was speaking up when absolutely nobody else was. Not in 2012 when the USADA report made it safe. In the early 2000s, when the omerta was still enforced and calling out doping could end your career, your friendships, and your business relationships. He did it anyway. For over a decade he was treated as a pariah by the sport he'd given everything to.
The motor doping piece is the other thread worth paying attention to. LeMond has been raising concerns about mechanical doping for years — hidden motors in frames, magnetic wheel systems — well before it became a mainstream media story. Whether you agree with every claim or not, his track record on calling things early is hard to ignore. He was right about EPO. He was right about Armstrong. Dismissing his concerns about motors feels like a bad bet.
This is a conversation about integrity and what it costs. If you care about the history of the sport, the episodes are below.