Originally Posted by
dbf73
but was EPO available in Europe or elsewhere? The FDA often takes its time approving drugs/devices that become available outside the US earlier. It may have also been available via "clinical trials" before general release. That being said, "strong speculation" means bupkis.
The drug commonly called "EPO" is epotin alfa, brand names Epogen/Procrit in the US where it was approved June 1989, brand names Eprex/Erypro in Europe where it was approved in 1990.
http://www.spnefro.pt/nefro_portugue..._artigo_04.pdf
Very limited quantities of drug were used in clinical trials before approval, but those would not have been available unless the bike racer was under a doctor's care for chronic kidney disease and resultant anemia and enrolled in a clinical trial. Clinical trial drugs are tightly controlled and enrollment in trials is also tightly controlled, because the drug makers have billions at stake. I don't know the exact number, but probably only a couple-or-few hundred patients got drug in those trials.
It is very clear that Tours were not being won using EPO before 1991. How quickly bike racers started using the drug after it was approved and started being commercially sold, I don't know, but I'd think from 1992-on an increasing number of racers started using it. That is about when clean riders started getting dropped.
LeMond's Tours were won in 1986, 1989, and 1990. He definitely won them without EPO. Ditto his World Championships in 1983 and 1989.
Did he use other drugs - amphetamines, cortisone, etc? He could have, those drugs were not unknown in the peleton in his generation and earlier generations. But there is no evidence that he did. And those drugs are very "small potatoes" compared to EPO and later blood doping. The big doping problem in cycling was EPO/blood transfusions - those are the drugs that transformed good riders into world beaters - like Lance.