Rough Ride

by Paul Kimmage

  On it continued to the end of 1996 like a runaway train. Fear had gripped the peloton. Suspicion was everywhere. Cynicism reigned. The more journalists questioned, the more officials covered up. Rouet and Bouvet had had enough. Rumours began to circulate that they had begun an investigation and uncovered information that would shake the sport to its roots. As winter approached, there was an overriding sense that something had to give. On 23 October, it did. In an open letter published in L'Equipe, Daniel Baal (President of the French Cycling Federation), Roger Legeay (President of the French Professionals League) and Jean-Marie Leblanc (Director-General of the Tour de France) announced their concern that the battle was being lost in the war against drugs. The letter, which was addressed to the French Minister for Sport, Guy Drut and the President of the UCI, Hein Verbruggan, urged the International Olympic Committee and various state bodies and international federations to 'invest in the scientific research' that would restore the credibility of dope controls. 'If it is confirmed that blood tests are a more effective means of detection, then we must change the legislation immediately. We must stop the development of forbidden practices which put athletes' health at risk and sport under suspicion.' The letter also stressed the need to 'continue the research into the use of corticoids and testosterone, despite the legal problems that have been encountered in this domain and to reinforce the fight against the continued use of anabolic steroids outside the period of competition'.

  For the three most powerful men in French cycling to go public on a subject that has always been taboo erased any remaining doubts about the gravity of the situation. The letter was, as Philippe Bouvet observed in the same edition of L'Equipe, a 'cri d'alarme'. 'For sure we didn't need to wait until the autumn of 1996 to discover that the problem of doping exists. Or that the problem exists in other sports than cycling. But it exists a lot in cycling. Proof? No, apart from the one or two who occasionally get caught (and you really do wonder sometimes how that even happens), there is no proof. But let's not kid ourselves that we don't have a problem.'

  Once the big guns had spoken, it didn't take long for the wall of silence to crack.

  On 25 October, two days after the publication of the letter, Flavio Alessandri, a former Italian national team doctor, confided to a journalist from La Gazzetta dello Sport that he had collaborated, a few years back, in a survey with Sandro Donati from the Italian Olympic Committee about drug abuse in cycling that had never seen the light of day. When the journalist made a follow-up call to Mario Pescante, the President of the Italian Olympic Committee, the story was denied.

  On 26 October Walter Veltroni, a prominent politician, announced that he would investigate the missing dossier immediately.

  On 28 October Pescante announced that he had found the dossier but that it was too 'generalised' to be of any worth in the public domain.

  On 29 October the dossier was handed to an examining magistrate.

  On 30 October the full contents of the dossier were revealed to the public.

  On 8 November, on the eve of the presentation of the route for the 1997 Giro D'Italia, a delegation of Italian professionals, which included the former World Champions, Gianni Bugno and Maurizio Fondriest, demanded that blood tests be introduced for everyone from the start of 1997.

  L'Equipe published their investigation 'Le Terrible Dossier' in January 1997. Spread over four days, it opened with the story behind the suppression of the Donati dossier and then focused on the problem in France. Two doctors were interviewed in the second instalment and two riders in the third. Jean-Michel Rouet explains, 'As soon as we started, it was the usual brick wall: "Ahh, you're going to start stirring the shit again, why are you always picking on us?" We contacted a lot of riders; some still racing, others who had just retired. Presenting them as "X" or "Y" had no value for me. It was important they went on the record. We had a fair idea that Gilles Delion would talk – throughout his career he had refused to get involved with doping and always spoke without bitterness on the subject. And then I spotted something Nicolas Aubier was quoted to have said in one of the Brittany papers and I thought that maybe he would agree too.'

  The interview with Nicolas Aubier appeared in L'Equipe on 16 January. Pierre Ballester asked the questions. It will probably ring a bell.

  Nicolas, you are twenty-five years old, four years as a professional and you've decided to pack it in. Why?

  Because of the atmosphere that reigns in the sport. Professional cycling is a fantastic job but one that has become more and more unnatural. Vicious.

  Without beating about the bush, you're talking about doping?

  Yes, doping. It wasn't possible to continue in this way. With one or two exceptions, you can't be competitive without turning to it.

  So how did you tackle the problem?

  When I signed my contract at the start of last year, a person on the team, who wasn't one of the medical staff, advised me that it was time I applied myself. Until then, I had spent three years in another team and while I had dabbled a bit here and there, what this guy was proposing was more serious. In order to optimise my physical capabilities, he suggested a cure of EPO. The cure consisted of seven ampoules of Eprex 4000 to be taken by subcutaneous injection over the period of a month. I was also to take plenty of aspirin to keep the blood fluid. I refused. The season started badly. I picked up a dental infection and when I abandoned Paris-Nice, the same person offered me a testosterone tablet and an injection of a product containing amino acids he had secured from Italy, which was supposed to help you recuperate. I didn't want to take it but . . . well, I wasn't going well. I had a gun held to my head so I succumbed like a lot of others. In stage races, the dose was a tablet and an injection each night but because I was really creeping, I accepted two tablets a night. During some of the earlier races I had been taking 'persantine' – a heart vasodilator – with fifty kilometres to go, but when I mentioned this one day to my family doctor he advised strongly against it so I stopped . . . Which kind of relegated me to the subs bench as far as this person was concerned. That's the way it works, you either adhere to the system or they kick you into touch.

  And do many of the riders adhere?

  Yes. A lot. To be honest, I don't think it's possible to make the top 100 on the ranking list without taking EPO, growth hormone or some of the other stuff . . . well, no, that's not true, Chris Boardman is there. During my first two years, I roomed with him a lot and never saw him take an injection. I still don't know how he managed to be competitive. He had his own doctor in Liverpool and just stuck to what he knew – which is probably one of the reasons he has never been able to attain his ambitions in the Tour de France. But to be honest, the riders are not to blame, it's the system . . .

  How do you make that out?

  It's simple. As I understand it, it all came from Italy at the end of the 1980s. The Italians were winning everything, dominating the races. They discovered a magic formula, a thing that was undetectable and the French were just making up the numbers. Slowly, we started getting into it. If we were going to compete with them, we needed the same arms.

  Take me back to the start and your first experiences.

  I had a pretty quick graduation to the professional peloton. At the age of nineteen, I went from being a third category amateur to a first category amateur with the Bataillon de Joinville team and signed my first professional contract at the end of 1992. In my first season the only tiling I used was oral multivitamins like Supadyne and Tardiferon and no soigneur or directeur sportif ever suggested I should start to dope. It was happening all right, but it was the rider's decision on whether he went down that road or not. At the end of my second year, I started using banned products for the first time – a medicament that was used for the treatment of allergies and asthma. In three years, I took a fifteen-day cure of corticoids twice. Then, in 1995, I won the Tour of Poitou-Charentes, a five-day stage race. To be honest, I don't know how I won. I took nothing, just a vitamin and caffeine tablet fifty kilometres
from the finish. If I had taken two, I still wouldn't have had any problems with the sample at the finish. But that didn't stop me being scared.

  So riders know exactly what they are doing?

  Of course they do. The team doctor or the guy selling the stuff will never make the approach; the first step is always taken by the rider. The terrible thing is, that the abuse of doping products is so commonplace that the guy who doesn't take anything is considered abnormal. You should see, for example, the race for ice-cubes in the morning at the hotels . . . it's crazy. The guys taking EPO have to inject every two days and it has to be stored at the right temperature. You only have to stand watching in the corridors and you can figure out who is using it.

  And no one says anything?

  But why should they? Everyone profits from the system. The riders optimise their performance. The teams are more competitive and as a result more attractive to sponsors. Even you guys in the media . . . the slant is always about winning. Everyone knows exactly what's going on. No one says a word.

  So you never took EPO or growth hormone'?

  No. I'm Cartesian by nature. I like to know how it works and where I'm going. With that (EPO and growth hormone), it's the unknown. I prefer to pack it in.

  But how do you acquire this stuff – it can't be bought in France?

  From dealers. It might be your team-mate or a soigneur, they'll sell it and take a commission. They buy the stuff in Belgium, Holland and Switzerland. These guys also profit from the system, as do the laboratories. You can even order it from the Internet.

  Is the subject taboo? Do the riders speak about it among themselves?

  Sure they do, but with derision. In the peloton, it's paraded as a joke which serves as a front for the riders' fear. In a serious one-to-one, I'm sure that a lot of the riders would admit to being concerned and wondering where it's all leading to.

  What do you think of the Italians and their recent demand for blood tests to be introduced?

  It makes me laugh. They were the people who introduced it in the first place. And now they want to wipe it out? Well if they do, it's obviously because they've found something more sophisticated already. Having said that, I think the introduction of blood tests is a good thing. Someone told me EPO was detectable in urine, but that you'd need a sample of half a litre! There is no point in dreaming that they are going to find a means to defuse the bomb, but blood tests would still be a dissuasive. The international authorities need to understand that you can't expect to take on a tank with a penknife. Because this is a serious mess we're in. It's one thing taking amphetamines in the criteriums when there's no controls, but EPO and growth hormone is a much more dangerous game. One of the biggest disappointments I will take from my career is the wait-and-see attitude that has been adopted by officials. Why aren't they doing something about it? Why haven't they made every possible effort to eliminate this cancer? It's as if the riders are entirely disposable; wheel them in for the show and then discard them. It's time to put a stop to the massacre.

  On the day after the interview was published, the President of the UCI was interviewed about the planned introduction of blood tests for 1997. Hein Verbruggan had some interesting observations to make about the coverage in L'Equipe. 'I will probably disappoint you,' he informed Philippe Bouvet, 'but I was not at all impressed, not at all, with the accounts given by riders like Delion and [Graham] Obree. [The Scottish former World Champion told L'Equipe on 19 October that he was giving up the sport because he couldn't compete with riders who were using EPO.] What we are dealing with here is guys at the end of their career who can no longer hang on. I found it cowardly, there is no other word.' But Bouvet wasn't having any of it: 'On the contrary Mister President, there are grounds for suggesting that cowardice is to hide behind statistics for years that do not represent reality.'

  Blood tests were introduced in 1997. One small step for (sports) mankind. As we close for press, the scandals and the cover up continue. There is still much to be done.

  POSTSCRIPT TO THE 1998 EDITION

  IT'S ALL WRITTEN DOWN

  The morning was crisp, sunny and perfect. I stepped from my car and followed the voice of the race announcer to the sign-on podium, where the first sight of racers and the smell of embrocation quickened my pulse. It was the first Sunday of October in the village of St Arnoult-en-Yvelines and I had made the trip from Dublin not to report on Paris-Tours, the penultimate classic of the 1997 season, but to find Andre Chappuis. Eight years had passed since our last meeting. Then he was leaving home to start a new life in Africa. I was leaving France to start a new life at home. Maybe, if things had been different when Rough Ride was published, I would have delivered on my promise to keep in touch. But the reaction of Roche, Colotti and Claveyrolat had shattered my understanding of friendship and, much as I wanted to believe that Andre still regarded me highly, I was afraid to find out.

  As I made my way through the gathering crowds, I was surprised that most of the officials in the crisp blue blazers seemed to recognise my face, but then I suppose I recognised most of theirs. There was Eric Caritoux, the former winner of the Tour of Spain and Charly Mottet, an ancien maillot jaune of the Tour de France. There was Maurice LeGuilloux, once one of Hinault's most loyal lieutenants and Frank Pineau, a former team-mate. I nodded polite greetings to those who were polite and it struck me that the more things change in this sport, the more they remain the same. We are all brothers in the same family. Those who break the law of silence may be despised, but they are never really excluded. There are black sheep in every family after all.

  After half an hour of searching there was still no sign of Andre. Guy Roger from L'Equipe confirmed that he was definitely working on the race but wasn't sure in what capacity. Most of the former professionals had been hired to chauffeur sponsors and corporate guests, but I had dismissed that possibility immediately. Although the driving would have appealed to him, the bullshit that went with it just wouldn't have been his style. Resigned to the probability that Guy had made a mistake, I drove ahead of the race to Tours and watched as the Russian André Tchmil outsprinted Max Sciandri to win.

  Half an hour after the victory ceremony, I was making my way back to the car when Andre emerged with a friend from behind the finishing barriers.

  'Du Dieu!' (Good God) he exclaimed with a grin as we hugged, 'What are you doing here?'

  'I just came over to cover the race,' I lied. 'You look good. How have you been?'

  His face was fresher than I expected. His hair, longer than it used to be in his racing days. Lighting up a Marlboro, he explained that they had driven down from Paris on Friday evening to prepare the finishing area for the race arrival. The hours were long but he enjoyed it. The Société du Tour (the organisers of the Tour de France, Paris-Tours and a number of other classics) had been using him a lot of late, but he expected things would get quieter when winter came round. I asked if he wanted a beer, but he was too busy so we arranged to meet for dinner that night

  When we sat down later that evening there was so much I wanted to talk to him about his time spent in Africa . . . his marriage and the birth of his son . . . his return to Rumilly . . . his problems finding work . . . what he thought of my book. I knew he must have known what I'd said about him by now, even though Rough Ride had never been published in France. But the more the evening went on, the less inclined I was to ask. Three of his colleagues had joined us for dinner and he seemed more comfortable speaking about the present than the past. So I sat back and listened to stories of their adventures on the road, watching as he lit another Marlboro.

  'Dede, you shouldn't smoke so much.'

  'Paul,' he said, 'the date, the day, it's all written down. There's nothing to be done.'

  We looked at each other and smiled.

  DEATH OF AN EAGLE

  Non! Rien de rien

  Non! Je ne regrette rien

  Charles Dumont/Michel Vancaire (as sung by Edith Piaf)

  Maybe it is because sport is
so often used as a metaphor for life that we take so much for granted when the final whistle blows. Week after week we watch the barriers of fear and pain and suffering being extended and imagine only contentment in the elite sportsman's fife when the game comes to an end. When you have worn the badge of courage, and conquered all the peaks, what more can life throw at you in retirement?