Hey everyone today Im going to talk to you about the use of  performance enhancing drugs in professional cycling, and more specifically Lance Armstrong and his involvement with them. So how many of you know who Lance Armstrong is? Cool, for those of you who don’t he is a former professional road racing cyclist who won’t 7 Tour De France’s in a row, which is a record and that is the oldest, international, and most prestigious cycle race in the world. He was a professional cyclist who had some achievements, but in 1996 he tested positive for testicular cancer, which he beat, and 3 years later won his first of 7 consecutive Tour De France’s. Throughout this time period, from 1999 to 2005, he lost many friends and forged many terrible relationships because of his use of performance enhancing drugs. Many of his teammates tried to turn him in, but he threatened them and insulted them and called them traitors until they backed down, but one man didn’t care and was able to launch a full fledged investigation, and it even became a federal investigation, given the severity of the issue. It got to a very bad point in Armstrong’s life where he had lost too many friends and the lies had become too much, so in 2013, as a guest on Oprah, he confessed to using performance enhancing drugs during all 7 of his Tour De France victories, as well as before he tested positive for cancer. As a result, he was stripped of all of his Tour De France medals, and forever banned from racing professionally. It is a shame because he was an idol to so many people and such an inspiration for beating cancer and accomplishing what he did.

Armstrong isn’t the only cyclist to dope though. From 1998 to 2013, 12 Tour De France winners have been linked to doping, and during these years 65% of the top ten finishers have been linked to doping. Many other cyclists use performance enhance drugs, so many that cycling organizations have implemented new and ore extensive drug tests that can detect the use of performance enhancing drugs, but they cannot detect blood transfusions which is also very common. Hopefully even more measures are taken to prevent the use of these drugs so that cycling can recapture its true spirit and the sport will once again have integrity, and those who work hard will see the results. Thanks for listening and I hope you guys learned something new today. Any questions?