The Secret Race: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour de France: Doping, Cover-ups, and Winning at All Costs

by Daniel Coyle

  As the [1996] season went by, there was so much tension at the dinner table—everybody knew what was up, everybody was talking about EPO, everybody could see the writing on the wall. They were looking to me to give them a little guidance. But what could I say?

  Nobody sets out wanting to dope. We love our sport because of its purity; it’s just you, your bike, the road, the race. And when you enter a world and you begin to sense that doping is going on, your instinctive reaction is to close your eyes, clap your hands over your ears, and work even harder. To rely on the old mystery of bike racing—push to the limit, then push harder, because who knows, today might be better. In fact, I know this sounds strange, but the idea that others doped actually inspired me at first; it made me feel noble because I was pure. I would prevail because my cleanness would make me stronger. No job too small or tough.

  It was easy to maintain this attitude, because doping simply wasn’t discussed—at least, not officially. We’d whisper about it at the dinner table or on rides, but never with our team directors or management or doctors. Every once in a while, an article might appear in a foreign paper and cause a brief commotion, but for the most part everyone pretended that these insane race speeds were normal. It was as if you were staring at someone casually lifting thousand-pound barbells over their heads with one hand, and everybody around you was acting like it was just another day at the office.

  Still, we couldn’t help but express our worries. There’s an oft-told story about how Marty Jemison and I approached Postal doctor Prentice Steffen in 1996 and had a conversation about how fast the races were. Steffen says Marty hinted that the team should start providing some illicit medical enhancements, and that I stood there in support. I have to say, I don’t remember this specific incident happening, but I can certainly recall the feeling of being worried, of wondering why the hell these guys were so fast, and wondering what they might be on.‡

  Weisel, as you might imagine, enjoyed losing even less than we did, and his feelings were intensified by the structure of the sport. In baseball or football, the league lends stability to each team. Pro cycling, on the other hand, follows a more Darwinian model: teams are sponsored by big companies, and compete to get into big races. There are no assurances; sponsors can leave, races can refuse to allow teams. The result is a chain of perpetual nervousness: sponsors are nervous because they need results. Team directors are nervous because they need results. And riders are nervous because they need results to get a contract.

  Weisel understood this equation. This was his shot for the Tour, and he is not the kind of guy who reacts to losing by patting you on the back and saying, “Don’t worry, guys, we’ll get ’em tomorrow.” No, Weisel was the kind of guy who reacted to losing by getting pissed off. And in 1996 we watched him go from pissed off to white hot to Defcon 5. We started to see him and Eddie B arguing after races. We started to hear the growl.

  We better see some good numbers tomorrow, or somebody’s gonna be seeing the door.

  You guys gotta step it up, starting now!

  That was fucking pathetic. What’s the problem with you guys?

  The nine-day Tour of Switzerland in June was our chance for redemption. We were hopeful; Hampsten, who would co-lead with Darren Baker, had won the race in 1988. Weisel planned to fly over for the big stages to ride in the team car with Eddie B. This was going to be our big opportunity to prove that we belonged.

  We got crushed. We hung for a few days, but when the race got serious, we flunked. The telling moment came on stage 4, on the climb of the monstrous Grimsel Pass—26 kilometers long, 1,540 meters gained with a 6 percent grade, ending at the aptly named Lake of the Dead. On the lower slopes, the pack accelerated and we fell away like we had anchors attached to our bikes. Hampsten was the last holdout, hanging tough in a group of twenty, flying up, up the mountain. Weisel and Eddie B yelled encouragement, but it was no use—Hampsten was going full bore, and everybody was simply stronger. The group pulled away, leaving Hampsten behind.

  Watching the leaders disappear up the road, Weisel got antsy. Race protocol requires the team car to remain behind the team’s leading rider in order to help him with feeding and mechanical problems; violating this rule is unthinkable, the equivalent of a NASCAR pit crew abandoning their post in the middle of a race. But Weisel had no more patience, not for protocol, not for anything. He ordered Eddie B to leave Hampsten, to drive around him, to catch up with the leaders so he could see the fireworks. Weisel wanted to scout new riders for the 1997 team. The engine revved; Hampsten watched in disbelief as the Postal car disappeared up the road. The message was clear: Weisel wasn’t going to wait around for losers.

  Two days later, at the foot of Susten Pass (17 kilometers at 7.5 percent grade), co-leader Darren Baker blew a tire. I gave him my wheel and by the time I got a replacement, I was alone. I gave everything I had, but couldn’t catch up. I spent the day alone, trying to make it under the time limit. I remember seeing desperate riders hanging on to rearview mirrors, hitching rides. I remember telling myself I’d never do that. In the end I missed the cutoff, and the next day I was on a plane back home, wondering if I had what it took.

  The Tour of Switzerland was the kind of experience that might have made me think twice about my sport, to wonder why I was working so hard for nothing. I might have been tempted to quit, if bike racing had been the only thing in my life. But it wasn’t. You see, a few weeks before that race, I had fallen in love.

  Her name was Haven Parchinski; we’d met at the Tour DuPont back in the States that spring; she’d volunteered at the race, checking badges at the hotel dining room. She was beautiful: petite and dark-haired, with a huge smile and hazel eyes that seemed to catch the light. I was nervous about talking with her, so I asked my teammate Marty Jemison’s wife, Jill, who worked PR for Postal, to introduce us. It turned out Haven lived in Boston, and worked as an account executive at Hill Holliday, an advertising agency. I started arriving at meals early and having four or five coffees afterward, just to have an excuse to be in the same room. We started to chat, and to flirt. My heart was thumping, and it wasn’t the coffee.

  The race that year was being dominated by Lance, who’d showed up bigger and stronger than ever.§ But in one of the last stages of the race, I found myself in the lead group, and I was feeling strong. It’s funny how much racing depends on your emotions; my crush on Haven was a shot of rocket fuel. With about four kilometers to go I launched a solo attack and nearly made it to the line before the pack caught me. I won the day’s most aggressive rider award, and was called to stand on the podium, and was handed a beautiful bouquet of flowers. That night, I sent the bouquet to Haven’s room. At first, she thought it was some kind of mistake. Then she connected the dots, and called to thank me, and we talked for an hour. At the end of the race, there was a party, and afterward I walked her to her room and gave her a good-night kiss—a single kiss, nothing more, and nothing less—and from that moment on we were together.

  We were a good match. Haven wasn’t impressed by bike racers, and didn’t know a whole lot about cycling, and I loved that. She knew about business, the ad game, politics, the bigger world I’d been missing.

  The real test for our new relationship came when Haven went to visit my family in Marblehead for the annual Mountain Goat Invitational Crazy Croquet Tournament in our backyard. Haven dove right in, proved she could take it and dish it out with the best of them. She sent my parents a thank-you note afterward, mentioning that she’d never realized that croquet was a full-contact sport. My folks loved her; they’d often meet her for dinner when I was out of town. We used to joke that with my race schedule, they had more dates with Haven than I did.

  Haven’s parents were less enthusiastic about our relationship, maybe because “aspiring bike racer” doesn’t look great on a résumé. But they came to a race that July, in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, and I was fortunate enough to win, so they could see that while their daughter might be dating only a bike racer, at least
she was dating a decent one. That December I left my little house in Nederland, Colorado, and moved into Haven’s place in Boston, though we didn’t tell her parents; we pretended I was just visiting.

  When I look back, those might have been my happiest days. I was twenty-five years old. I had a budding relationship with Haven, a boisterous new golden retriever pup named Tugboat, and maybe a future racing my bike, if I kept improving. It felt like magic—I pushed the pedals, and this fun, interesting, challenging life was assembling itself around me. Around us.

  Over in Europe, there were also hopeful signs that the days of the circus strongmen might be numbered. Riis’s 1996 Tour de France victory had been marked by moments of superhuman dominance, and people were whispering about doping. For example, at key moments on big climbs, Riis had done something no one had ever seen: he coasted back to look at the other contenders, almost taunting them, then accelerated away as if on a motorcycle. Around Europe, voices of reason began to speak up. An Italian judicial report had put a spotlight on EPO abuse among pro cyclists in that country; the French newspaper L’Équipe had published a series of articles in which riders said they could no longer keep up without taking EPO, which was as yet undetectable in tests. Columnists wrote about how the new drugs were endangering the dignity of the sport. All this pressure fell smack onto the shoulders of Hein Verbruggen, the Dutchman who ran the UCI, cycling’s governing body. I hoped the UCI would act, if for no other reason than that I reasoned it might improve my chances of keeping up.

  But all that seemed like small potatoes when I heard in early October that Lance had been diagnosed with testicular cancer, which had spread to his abdomen and brain. It was shocking, a reminder of how quickly life can change. The photos of him shook me to the core. I’d just seen him, so big and strong and invincible, winning the Tour DuPont that May. Now he was skinny, bald, scarred. I heard that he had vowed to come back, and my first thought was, No way. My second thought was, Well, if anybody can, it’s Lance.

  As the calendar turned toward spring, I found myself looking forward to the 1997 season with new enthusiasm. Weisel was the talk of the cycling world, because he was getting it done. He was signing some of the sport’s biggest names. We’d heard he was overhauling the staff and the schedule, and that some of us—hopefully me—would be based full-time in Europe, in a town near the Pyrenees called Girona. As this news arrived, Haven and I talked it over, and tried to figure out how we were going to navigate these changes. One thing we settled on fast: whatever happened, wherever it happened, we’d make it work.

  * Historical note: Doping and cycling have been intertwined since the sport’s earliest days. In the first part of the twentieth century, cyclists used stimulants that affected the brain (cocaine, ether, amphetamines), reducing feelings of fatigue. In the 1970s, new drugs like steroids and corticoids focused on the body’s muscles and connective tissues, adding strength and reducing recovery time. But the real doping breakthrough happened when the focus shifted to the blood—specifically to increasing its oxygen-carrying capacity.

  Erythropoietin, or EPO, is a naturally occurring hormone that stimulates the kidneys to produce more oxygen-carrying red blood cells. Commercially developed in the mideighties to help dialysis and cancer patients who suffered from anemia, it was quickly adopted by athletes—and for good reason. A 13-week study of fit recreational cyclists in the European Journal of Applied Physiology shows that EPO increased peak power output by 12–15 percent, and increased endurance (time riding at 80 percent of maximum) by 80 percent. Dr. Ross Tucker, who writes for the highly regarded Science of Sport website, estimates that for world-class athletes, EPO improves performance around 5 percent, or roughly the difference between first place in the Tour de France and the middle of the pack.

  One early risk of EPO was the increased likelihood of funerals. EPO is thought to be behind the deaths of a dozen Dutch and Belgian cyclists in the late eighties and early nineties: their hearts stopped when they could not pump the EPO-thickened blood. Stories from that era tell of riders who set alarm clocks for the middle of the night, so they could wake up and do some pulse-increasing calisthenics.

  † From 1980 to 1990, the average speed of the Tour de France was 37.5 kph; from 1995 to 2005, it increased to an average of 41.6 kilometers per hour. When you account for air resistance, that translates to a 22 percent increase in overall power.

  ‡ This incident became semi-famous when Steffen recounted it numerous times in the media over the years. Steffen maintains that Jemison was hinting about doping. Jemison says he was frustrated at Steffen’s insistence on giving Postal riders no more than aspirin and oral vitamins. “I knew there were legal intravenous vitamins and amino acids, and I put pressure on Steffen to tell me why we weren’t doing that,” Jemison says. “At that moment, I can honestly say that doping wasn’t on my radar. I’d never heard the term ‘EPO.’ That changed fast, though.”

  § Armstrong had started working with Italian doctor Michele Ferrari in the fall of 1995. When he showed up for the 1996 season, teammates were surprised at how big he’d become. Armstrong’s arms were so big that he had to cut the sleeves of his jersey to fit them; Scott Mercier kidded him about playing for the Cowboys.

  Chapter 3

  EURODOGS

  I went from thinking one hundred percent that I would never dope to making a decision in ten minutes that I was going to do it.

  —David Millar, former World Champion

  and Tour de France stage winner

  TO KICK OFF the 1997 season, Thom Weisel gathered the team at his beach house in Oceanside, California, a few miles from where we were holding our training camp. It was Super Bowl Sunday in late January; a perfect blue-sky California day. We stood in his living room, with its picture windows and its million-dollar ocean views. But I paid zero attention to that, because the view inside was more impressive.

  There was Olympic gold medalist Viatcheslav Ekimov, his blond mullet in midseason form. There was Jean-Cyril Robin, newly signed from the powerful French Festina team, looking every inch the Tour contender. There was Adriano Baffi, a muscled strongman from the Mapei team. Eddie B had been demoted to assistant director, replaced by a friendly Dane named Johnny Weltz. Hampsten was gone, having retired. Team doctor Prentice Steffen was gone too, replaced by Dr. Pedro Celaya, a dapper Spaniard with a warm manner and soft brown eyes.*

  Just like that, the original Postal team became Postal 2.0: a gleaming, state-of-the-art European model. Looking around, I felt two emotions. The first was a thrill; with these guys on our team, we had a genuine shot at making it into the Tour de France. The second was nervousness: Did I belong with guys of this caliber? Did I have what it took to be a good support rider—what was called a domestique, or servant? Could I maybe even make the Tour team, if we made it that far?

  At some point, Weisel poured a glass of red wine and raised it. We went quiet, and listened as he made one of his blunt, growling go get it fucking done speeches. The football game was on TV, and Weisel made the connection—the Tour de France was our Super Bowl, and we were going to get there, no matter what.

  Weisel and Weltz laid out the plan: training would be harder, more organized, more purposeful. I and four other Americans—Scott Mercier, Darren Baker, Marty Jemison, and George Hincapie—would move to Girona. Our racing schedule would be more ambitious; we’d target the prestigious classic Liège–Bastogne–Liège, return to the Tour of Switzerland, and, if we did well enough, ride in our first Tour de France in July. Weisel’s goal was clear: we would prove that Postal belonged in Europe. We wouldn’t knock on the door anymore; we would kick the bastard off its hinges.

  At some point in the party, I spotted a plate of chocolate chip cookies. I was conscious of my weight like any rider, but we had been training hard, and these were awfully good-looking cookies—crispy on the edges, a little underdone in the middle, just the way I like them. I couldn’t resist. I reached for one, munched it slowly—perfection. Then I took another. As I ch
ewed, I got a strange feeling I was being watched. I looked up to see the new team doctor, Pedro Celaya, watching me closely from across the room, measuring the moment as surely as if he were taking my temperature. Pedro smiled at me, and slowly waggled a finger in a humorous but firm way: No no! I smiled back, pretending to hide the cookie under my shirt, and he laughed.

  I liked Pedro immediately. Unlike Steffen, whom I’d found distant and touchy, Pedro was like your favorite uncle. He looked you in the eyes; he asked how you felt; he remembered little things. He was a slight, pleasant-looking man with an unruly, graying thatch of hair and a playful grin. To him, life seemed a great entertainment; he was always ready for a laugh. His English might have been imperfect, but he was a brilliant conversationalist because he seemed to sense what I was feeling before I felt it.

  One of our first serious conversations had to do with my blood. Pedro explained that hematocrit was the percentage of blood that contains red blood cells. He explained a new UCI rule that required any rider whose hematocrit exceeded 50 percent—a probable sign of EPO use—to sit out fifteen days. Because there was as yet no EPO test, exceeding 50 percent was not considered doping; instead, UCI president Hein Verbruggen called it a health issue, terming the suspension “a hematocrit holiday.”†

  So Pedro asked me if he could please draw a small amount of blood, to check my hematocrit. He did, transferred the blood into a few narrow glass tubes, and inserted the tubes into a device the size of a toaster—a centrifuge. I heard a whirring sound; Pedro extracted the tubes and examined the hatchmark on the side.

  “Not too bad,” he said. “You are 43.”