I'm going to push back on the Lance Armstrong bit. As you point out, anyone who followed racing at the time knew that the top tier were all doping or at least some if you wanted to pretend your hero was clean. Here is a retrospective article about its pervasiveness [1]. But, it does not take much intelligence to figure out that a banned substance, EPO, that did not have a test until 2000 was being used in the 90s. The reason why Armstrong is much more infamous is because the scale of the operation the U.S. Postal Service Pro Cycling Team was conducting and the leading role Armstrong played on the team and the success he had. That being said, putting ethics aside for a second, what they did is no different than the level of performance squeezing that teams like Ineos or Jumbo Visma do today. They weren't gaining by the lies themselves (like the person in the story) but to keep their methods hidden from other teams.
Reminds me of these here stories from Darrell Waltrip about some of the ways the NASCAR teams use to cheat back in his era lol very interesting bit of racing history that doesn't usually get talked about =p
[1] - https://www.businessinsider.com/lance-armstrong-doping-tour-...