Joe Rogan on cycling: what the evidence says · JRE #737
SUBJECT: CYCLING
Not a true/false call. Every claim is logged with its sources; read the exhibits below.
It's not, there was, out of all the people that won the Tour de France and all the years that you did it. If you go back to people that either weren't implicated or didn't test positive, like what is like 18th place or something fucking crazy like that?
What the evidence says 01 / RECORD
The 2012 USADA "Reasoned Decision" found that 20 of the 21 podium finishers (top three) in the Tour de France from 1999 through 2005, Armstrong's seven consecutive wins, were directly tied to likely doping through admissions, sanctions, investigations, or abnormal blood values; of 45 total podium finishes between 1996 and 2010, 36 involved riders similarly implicated. The single untainted podium finisher identified in that stretch was Fernando Escartin, who finished third in the 1999 Tour, not 18th. Cycling's governing body (UCI) and the Tour organizers ultimately chose not to reassign the vacated titles to any lower-placed finisher, leaving 1999-2005 with no official winner, rather than name a specific runner-up, at 18th place or otherwise, as the "clean" winner. No rigorous public accounting supports an exact 18th-place figure; the documented untainted podium finish in that era was much higher (3rd place), even though doping was pervasive enough that officials treated the entire podium field, not just the winner, as compromised.