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| EPO became a way of life |
Cycling has its Hall of Fame. Why not a Hall of Shame - for dopers?
How big would it need to be?
Vast, I imagine.
Reading the excellent
feature on the Italian legend Fausto Coppi in the recent Rouler magazine brought
doping into focus again for me.
It must be stressed there were no rules banning doping back then. There was not the stigma we attach to it today. It was probably just quietly accepted as "necessary", not talked about much.
So I don't think riders from that period would necessarily be in my Hall of Shame which will take nominations from the modern era only, for doping has become a far more sophisticated science and quite clearly recognised as cheating.
The idea of a Hall of Shame came to me after coming across the
autobiography of serial doper George Hincapie, “loyal” workhorse for that other
serial doper, the infamous Lance Armstrong.
First the Coppi article.
Although the piece didn’t broach the matter
of doping, an intriguing p
assage about Coppi's successful Hour record attempt at
Milan’s Vigorelli track in 1942 allured to it.
During the “last segment” of the Hour, when it was touch and
go whether Coppi would break Frenchman Maurice Archambaud record of 45.480km,
Coppi took three pills from his back pocket and swallowed them. There was no
explanation as to what the pills were but whatever they were, "they were enough to give him a final boost".
Coppi broke the record by
31 metres, establishing a new mark of
45.871km.
Notwithstanding Coppi’s remarkable athletic abilities in the
pre and post war years, earning him the moniker “Campionissimo” Coppi, like so
many of his compatriots, admitted doping.
And although this was not illegal it nevertheless provoked media interest as if perhaps the practice
was considered just as questionable as frequenting a brothel from time to time.
As in the following television i
nterview with Coppi who didn't deny he took "la bomba" when asked the following questions:
Answer: Yes
Answer: Whenever it was
necessary.
Question: And when was it
necessary?
Answer: Almost all the
time!
That’s OK, then!
There are stories of his rival Bartali going into Coppi’s
hotel room to rummage through his waste basket, filching out discarded
medicines and empty pill packets to see what he was on.
Coppi's many victories included five times winning the Tour of Italy, and twice winning the Tour de France. Other major successes included the world road title once, the Giro di Lombardia five times;
Milan San Remo three times and
the cobbled classic Paris – Roubaix once.
In Italy today, an Italian journalist says doping in cycling
is regarded as an occupational hazard.
Pro racing is especially tough, perhaps too tough if riders need to resort to chemical assistance to compete at the top. Single day races lasting
several hours, Tours of three weeks duration,
fierce competition, a long and
heavy racing programme pushing the body and mind to the limit.
You can’t win the Tour on salad and mineral water alone, a
famous rider once said.
But this raises the question, could Coppi have performed such feats of endurance in the Grand Tours and
classics had he not resorted to doping? The question can be asked of all of
the others, too.
It's all or nothing for them. Some riders faced with this choice have either simply raced clean and raced the best they could, or given up their on dreams of competing against the top professionals.
Those who doped appear to have simply adjusted their moral compass, placing the use of steroids, testosterone, growth hormone and various cocktail power boosters in
the same category as nutrition and having the best bikes and equipment. It all became part of the preparation in their virtual reality world.
They had no choice, they protested.
Which was the case for the defence when
in the early 1990s EPO made its appearance in the peloton.
This brings me to George Hincapie’s book,
The Loyal Lieutenant, My Story,
published in 2014 published by Harpur Sport, an imprint of Harper Collins
Publishers.
Perhaps the title ought to have been, Confessions of a
serial doper?
I only discovered this in my local library last week.
I found Big George to b
e most enlightening
about how he and Lance Armstrong famously and shamelessly doped their way to
Lance’s seven consecutive Tour de France victories.
In 2012 Hincapie confessed to and justified using performance
enhancing drugs.
"Given
the widespread use of performance-enhancing drugs by cyclists at the top of the
profession, it was not possible to compete without them," said the
39-year-old Hincapie, reported the BBC .
In January
the following year, on the Oprah Winnie show, Armstrong finally confessed to having doped
for all his seven Tour victories.
That has gone down as the biggest sporting con in history,
resulting in all seven victories being struck from the record. Not that it
concerned either of them.
They still
c
onsider those victories won.
What interests me is what is going on in the head of a rider
when he starts to dope.
Hincapie tells us in his book.
Hincapie, who is from New York, rode the Tour de France 17 times. A
tall impressive rider, capable enough of being the champion in any race of his
choosing, says Armstrong in the foreword.
Instead, their lifelong friendship which began in their
junior days, saw Hincapie put personal ambition aside in the interest of the
team. More specifically he become the willing workhorse for Armstrong
through the good
and bad.
The bad being….well we know all about that.
Hincapie’s story gets to the bottom of it.
When EPO (
Erythropoietin)
arrived on the scene we know that pros like Hincapie and Armstrong
justified taking the stuff by saying they were merely levelling the playing
field because almost everyone else was doping.
It was a two speed peloton in early 90s, those on it and
those left behind!
EPO was rocket fuel, increasing oxygen in the blood, boosting
even the average performer beyond his normal athletic ability.
That’s what pissed off Armstrong and Hincapie who were not yet
on that stuff, the fact that riders who once were hanging on and being dropped,
were suddenly riding along comparatively easily whereas they, the top
dogs,
were struggling.
So they decided to reboot the system and re-establish
the pecking order.
And they too eventually stuck needles in their shoulders and
joined the EPO club to get back on top. They began living the lie, living the
dream in the famous classics and the Grand Tours.
They faked it, courtesy of a skilfully
managed and administered doping programme to boost performance and fool
medical controls afterwards.
George’s book provided me with a fascinating insight with
what goes through the mind of a rider when he or she decides to cheat.
In 1995, he rode and completed his first grand tour, the
Vuelta, three weeks of suffering, including getting smashed into the barriers
by another rider 50 metres from a certain win three days from the end.
Halfway through the race Hincapie had pushed open the door
to the hotel bedroom he shared with another rider …. “I saw him with a needle
in his arm.”
Hincapie retreated, out of the room. The pair never spoke of
it.
Hincapie admitted to an “overwhelming sense of unfairness”.
“I didn’t know it at the time, but the effects of EPO are
staggering. The drug really was a game changer.”
His next moment of revelation came later in the race, which
made him realise he could never compete with guys who were on the juice unless
he too had assistance.
He’d listened to a rider complaining about how bad he felt,
how poor his results were, that he couldn’t recover.
And then noted how the rider’s friend came by
with speci
al package and how the next day, having struggled every day until
then, he was in the breakaway!
In 1996, Big George took the plunge. In his book he says that he felt he'd
reached the
end of his options of racing clean. The only way he could compete on a level playing
field with his rivals was to do what they were doing.
What finally convinced him to start cheating was seeing the
contents of Frankie Andreu’s cooler. Inside was a Thermos-like container.
“…even though I had no real idea what I was staring out, I was
gazing at my future.”
He was looking at labelless vials.
He figured it was EPO, the drug he
had heard about. So this was what all the fuss
was about?
“This is what I have to do to be the best I can be?”
Hincapie pressed Andreu to explain why he was taking EPO.
He replied he didn’t have a choice. He had to do it to
survive. Everyone was doing it, he said.
Hincapie made his first purchase in Switzerland.
No prescription necessary.
He says he it planned it like a military operation, withdrawing cash
from different ATM machines over a couple of days, following different routes
to and from his accommodation.
On the big day he wore a no-name plain jersey and rode his
bike acr
oss the Italian-Swiss border to Chiasso, a small town.
In the pharmacy there he asked for a box of Epirex.
That was the name he was told to ask for.
The lady stared at him for a moment, causing Hincapie a
surge of panic.
He worried he’d set off
silent alarms somewhere and feared for his downfall.
Clearly, Big George knew what he was doing was wrong.
She went away and after what seemed a long time returned
with an elongated box.
He handed her 500
Swiss francs and she gave him his new future – up to eight weeks supply.
Have a nice day, she said.
Back at the accommodation in Italy Hincapie prepared to take
his first shot in his upper arm.
It
seemed that riders self-treated. No doctors telling them how in those days.
There he was, sitting on the toilet seat, tiny syringe in
hand, nervous but determined.
“Here we go…” he said.
And he did the first of countless injections.
He exited the bathroom “a changed man”.
“I felt completely at peace.”
In 2004 two weeks before a major race he would take EPO
every other day. Sometimes he would mix in testosterone or growth hormone twice
a week.
“There was no guilt; it was part of the training.”
It was the new normal.
He found he could,
ride harder and for longer and recover more quickly because EPO stimulated
the production of red blood cells and increasing the flow of oxygen to his
muscles.
The book is his confession about this dark period in his life as top professional rider. It tells in detail of the highs and lows of how he and Armstrong and their team came to dominate the Tour, of the tactical, mental and physical battles engaged in, of how he strived for success in the single day classics.
There
are many contributions from compatriots, some of them also on the stuff, all singing the praises of a classy rider who would eventually came to terms with what he had done and bare his soul.
Big George, by the sound of it, is probably one of the
nicest dopers you could wish to meet.
It is well known that EPO, by thickening the
blood, leads to an increased risk of several deadly diseases, such as heart disease, stroke, and cerebral or pulmonary embolism. The misuse of recombinant human EPO may also lead to autoimmune
diseases with serious health consequences.
World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA)
