Racing Hard

by William Fotheringham

  The drugs question had not gone away since the Festina trial at the end of 2000, with Italian drugs police staging the biggest ever raid on a race at the 2001 Giro, the notorious San Remo “blitz”. At the Tour, Armstrong’s exposure as a Ferrari client and his crude attempts to news-manage the story meant that doping remained centre stage. As in every Tour since 1998, the reporting job was twofold: the doping story and in parallel, the bike race.

  Ferrari links keep the drugs issue simmering

  30 July 2001

  In a neat twist in the tail of this year’s Tour, the organisers placed yesterday’s final intermediate sprint of the race at Chatenay-Malabry, the little town in the south-west suburbs of Paris where France’s anti-doping laboratory developed the test for the banned blood booster erythropoietin (EPO) and where urine samples taken during the Tour are tested.

  It was a small reminder that the EPO test is being used for the first time in the Tour this year, and by happy coincidence the International Cycling Union revealed yesterday that of the 122 of the 170 drug samples taken on the Tour tested there so far, only one – from Txema Del Olmo – had been positive. They concluded: “We think that the problem of EPO no longer influences cycling at the highest level.”

  [They were right. Armstrong and company had moved on to blood doping. EPO was used by the smaller fry without the resources to remove and store blood or who were squeamish about the whole removal-reinjection process, or for training outside “windows” when it could be detected.]

  Though progress in combating EPO is undeniable, the signals from the Tour remain mixed three years after the Festina drugs scandal blew the sport apart. On Saturday, French campaigners against doping in all sports held a conference only 50 yards from the start in Orleans, where the French “Association for Fighting Doping” is based. You would not have known it if you were a spectator enjoying the show as the riders signed on.

  The campaigners, who included grass-roots groups, the former Festina trainer Antoine Vayer and the former Tour stage winner Gilles Delion, and who had ridden on their bikes from Friday’s finish 100 miles to the south, clearly felt marginalised. Indeed Vayer went so far as say they were “treated like the devil”.

  The rumblings about Lance Armstrong’s work with the controversial Italian trainer Michele Ferrari continued yesterday, when Greg LeMond, a triple winner of the Tour, summed up the feelings of many on this Tour in saying: “When Lance won the prologue to the 1999 Tour I was close to tears, but when I heard he was working with Michele Ferrari I was devastated. In the light of Lance’s relationship with Ferrari, I just don’t want to comment on this year’s Tour. This is not sour grapes. I’m disappointed in Lance, that’s all it is.”

  Even the Tour organiser Jean-Marie Leblanc concedes the name of Ferrari is a dubious one. “I am not happy the two names are mixed, but as long as there is no decision in court we have to wait,” he said. Leblanc feels the Tour is cleaner this year, but says “the questioning of Armstrong lacks dignity, as the presumption of innocence is fundamental. For Armstrong it is the presumption of guilt. The world is turned upside down.”

  Armstrong himself says of the relationship with Ferrari: “Is it questionable? Perhaps.” But he adds, referring to himself in the third person: “Has Lance Armstrong ever tested positive? No. Has Lance Armstrong been tested? A lot.”

  Vayer, who has watched the Festina riders dope themselves in the past with undetectable products, and has attacked Armstrong before, spoke of why the Tour organisers have kept at a distance from the campaigners. “They are afraid of us,” he said. “They think we are about polemic.”

  Squaring the circle of Armstrong, who shouts his cleanness from the rooftops, and Ferrari, who is to go on trial on drugs charges, has proved impossible for many, for all the Texan’s protestations. Their work is about altitude training and low-oxygen chambers and diet, but surely there are other specialists in these areas who are not facing charges of recommending banned, and possibly dangerous, hormones? Not so, says the man who manages Armstrong’s training, Chris Carmichael. “It’s about putting together the best people with the best athlete, searching high and low.”

  Armstrong’s agent and lawyer Bill Stapleton describes Ferrari as a brilliant scientist with an awful public reputation who has made very, very irresponsible comments. With complete confidence, he concludes: “I’m not worried, because he [Armstrong] will never, ever test positive.”

  Armstrong did actually test positive, when samples from the 1999 Tour were re-tested for EPO in 2004, but the results were not a conventional anti-doping test and no sanction was issued. So Stapleton was both right, and wrong.

  The Armstrong Tours followed a pattern: an undercurrent of doping stories making it clear that the problem had not gone away, but rarely ever offering any concrete insight into its extent. Simultaneously, Armstrong dominated the event while rebutting rumours that he might be doping. The 2002 Tour was typical: a fourth triumph for the Texan, and a massive scandal involving the third-placed rider, Raimondas Rumsas. As with the San Remo blitz in 2001, the Rumsas affair gave some insight into how many different kinds of drugs were in circulation. As for the mother-in-law story, no one believed it.

  Police reveal extent of drug haul

  13 September 2002

  The curious case of Raimondas Rumsas’s mother-in-law took a further twist yesterday with the publication of a list of 37 drugs found by customs men in the boot of the car driven by the cyclist’s wife, Edita, on the day her husband finished third in this year’s Tour de France.

  The drugs were, according to Edita Rumsas, destined for her sick mother. But the list of substances leaked by French legal sources to the daily newspaper L’Equipe includes two different varieties of the male hormone testosterone and a cortisone product widely used in cycling over the past 20 years, Delayed Action Kenacort, plus insulin and two different types of growth hormone.

  Rumsas has maintained since his wife’s arrest that the drugs found in her car are nothing to do with him. He was tested several times during the Tour de France and came up negative each time. The only anomaly to attract the interest of drug testers was a rise in his blood thickness level – haematocrit – during the race when, according to the laws of physiology, it should have diminished.

  The only item in the car that has been directly linked to the Lithuanian cyclist is an envelope bearing his name which contained six syringes ready for use. They contained a colourless liquid which is still being analysed, as are several foil packages of powders and pills with no name on them.

  [The syringes were subsequently found to contain EPO.]

  Several of the drugs are on the IOC’s list of banned substances. Among these are the growth hormone norditropin and a dwarfism cure, Geref, which stimulates the body’s natural production of growth hormone. Neither is detectable by current drug tests. The suitcase in the car contained eight Androderm patches, which release the male hormone testosterone slowly into the body, enabling the level to be maintained without breaching limits considered “natural”.

  As well as “natural” aids to maintaining health, such as large vitamin B and E tablets, there were also items similar to those found when police raided the Giro d’Italia last year: three different kinds of caffeine tablets and a preloaded syringe of insulin, which is banned for all but diabetics as it can enhance sugar uptake after exercise and counter the diabetic effect of growth hormone.

  Some of the products are readily available through US internet sites. Some are apparently homeopathic, such as Spascupreel, a stomach remedy containing the poisonous herb belladonna, and testis compositum, available on the internet from an English company and supposed to stimulate testosterone production.

  Edita Rumsas has been detained in Bonneville, in the French Alps, for six weeks, despite three appeals, diplomatic protests and demonstrations in front of the French embassy in the Lithuanian capital Riga. The investigating team will remain in Tuscany this week to interview Rumsas and members of his Lam
pre-Daikin team.

  Armstrong was not the only star with image problems at that time. Mario Cipollini’s issues were not drug-related, but came down to his unhappy relationship with the Tour de France organisers. The annual question of his inclusion, or not in the race, was an amusing sideshow, as indeed was Mario himself. The saga went centre stage in the run-up to the centenary Tour of 2003.

  Pin-up star left down and out

  25 May 2003

  This should have been a triumphant week for the world champion Mario Cipollini, but injury was piled on top of insult and Italy’s most charismatic cyclist has been left with road rash on his bottom, aching ribs and anger in his heart, while his country is just plain outraged.

  On Wednesday afternoon, Cipollini slid across the road at 30mph on his backside, decked out in rainbow-striped shorts matching his rainbow-striped world champion’s jersey, just 160 metres from the finish line in the little Veneto town of San Dona di Piave. He had the demeanour of a man who had thought things could get no worse, only to suddenly realise he had been mistaken. With bruising to his ribs and back, Cipollini was unable to continue the race and returned home on Thursday morning.

  In recent years, the Giro d’Italia has left most followers of cycling shaking their heads, but that has been because of doping scandals. This week’s polemica has been a different matter. Since Monday, cyclists, press, officials and fans have been united in their condemnation of the organisers of the Tour de France, who refused Cipollini a place in their race for the third year in succession.

  After his exclusion last year, Cipollini had a war of words with the Tour officials, then trained like a maniac to win the world title in October, on the assumption that they would want the world champion. But on Monday, when the final four slots for the Tour were announced, there was no place for his Domina Vacanze team, whose zebra-striped jerseys are the most distinctive in the peloton. In their place are the worthy but utterly dull Jean Delatour squad, sponsored by a jeweller from Lyon.

  The decision of the organisers, headed by the former journalist and Tour rider Jean-Marie Leblanc, looked particularly tactless as it came the day after Cipollini won his forty-first stage in the Giro, and a few hours before he won his forty-second. The figures are significant: 41 stage wins put Cipollini level with the record held since 1933 by Alfredo Binda, the greatest Italian campionissimo of the pre-war years; 42 meant the record was his.

  It is a colossal achievement. The two greatest Giro riders since the war, Fausto Coppi and Eddy Merckx, are both legends of the sport, and neither got near Binda’s record. Cipollini has made hype his trademark, marketing himself as “the fastest man in the world” but his record, a tribute to 15 seasons at the top, justifies the hyperbole. The anger among the tifosi has been palpable: “Go Mario, Leblanc is mad” read one banner; “History will be your judge” read another.

  The press, too, had bitter words for the Tour de France. In a venomous editorial under the headline “an offence to the world”, Angelo Zomegnan, one of La Gazzetta dello Sport’s most senior editors, described the decision as “a blasphemy” and concluded “the world title has been emptied of all meaning. Cipollini has lost to some Mr Nobodies.

  “Part of cycling’s heritage has been stupidly trodden into the dirt,” he continued. “Such an act is what we might have expected of one of Leblanc’s predecessors, hounded out of the job because they were unable to manage the Tour, or of his successor [Daniel Baal], a man who has never looked capable of taking in sport’s culture.”

  Even Lance Armstrong has expressed surprise: “I don’t understand this decision. I’ve asked for an answer but I haven’t gotten a response. There are three good reasons why this decision is absolutely wrong. First, Cipollini is the World Champion and they didn’t think only of the race. Second, he is the best sprinter in the world, so even on a technical level it’s a mistake not to invite him. Third, he is a really big personality and he’s very popular in cycling. He knows how to take his responsibilities, and the Tour should welcome him back.”

  As is always the case in Italy, it is not as simple as it looks. Cipollini and the Tour have a troubled recent history. He has started the race seven times, won 12 stages, but never made it to Paris. Last time he rode the Tour, in 1999, he won four stages in a row, a feat not seen since the 1930s. The organisers, however, do not approve of the fact that he wins his stages, then goes home when the race hits the mountains, leaving his team as mere passengers.

  There remains the chance of a last-minute change of heart. On Friday evening, Leblanc said: “There is a 10 to 15 per cent chance that Cipollini will start the Tour. I am wondering about the decision that we took. The problem is one of logistics and finding hotels.”

  But Cipollini will not forget an insult lightly. “Now, even if they do invite me I won’t go,” he said. “And if I had to go because the team asked me then I’d go without enthusiasm or preparation. For me to win a stage at the Tour wearing the world champion’s jersey would be the ultimate feat in my career. It will remain an unfulfilled desire.”

  The Tour organisers accepted that Cipollini probably merited a place ahead of some of the teams who achieved automatic qualification, an admission that their race will be the poorer without him. Not even Armstrong has Cipollini’s public profile, as astute marketing campaigns by sponsors have made him far more than a sprinter, and no ordinary world champion. He has, at various points in his career, also been “the Lion King”, the “Sun God”, “Super Mario” and “Julius Caesar”. He has constantly sported colour-coordinated outfits and bikes, usually receiving a fine for having non-standard kit. When the Tour started in Ireland in 1998, out came a green jersey with a “Peace” slogan. When he won his four stages in a row, he was issued a gold racing suit with the words “veni, vidi, vici”.

  He borrowed an Inter Milan shirt from his friend Ronaldo to wear after one victory, and has moonlighted as a fashion model. His shoe ads created the biggest stir, as he was depicted being fed grapes by topless models, and dressed up as Superman alongside a bodypainted nude. In a sport that has a lengthy tradition of celibacy, he makes much of his liking for amore. “Ejaculating costs you all of 100 calories, no more than a bar of chocolate,” he once said. Asked if he would like to be in movies, he answered “porn, naturally”.

  Victory at San Dona was a matter of 15 seconds in the future when it slid away, the perfect metaphor for a week in which the fastest man in the world glimpsed a place in the Tour de France, then lost it. First out, then down and out.

  Cipollini didn’t make it to the centenary Tour de France, which turned, after a glitch or two, into another Armstrong-fest. The build-up, however, offered an opportunity to give some insights into the history of the race.

  From seaweed to EPO – the Tour in four generations

  5 July 2003

  As the greatest cycle race in the world celebrates its centenary, riders from four golden eras remember what made it so special.

  1930s: Roger Lapebie:

  Made his Tour debut in 1932, won in 1937. Interviewed before his death in 1996, when the Frenchman was one of two surviving winners from the pre-war era.

  “The roads were épouvantable [terrifying], filled with huge potholes which we called nids de poule – bird’s nests – covered in pebbles, dust, gravel. We were given 25 pairs of shorts and 25 jerseys at the start of the race and changed our socks every day because of the dust and the dirt. We had saddle sores all the time because of the dirt and cowdung on the roads. It was easy to get an infection in any wound and the rare red meat we ate would give us boils.

  To look after ourselves, we had old wives’ remedies. Very hot baths, with three or four kilograms of sea salt, and two or three litres of vinegar after a cold rainy stage. We would have a hard massage, with a lot of seaweed, and we would wear long johns. We’d buy packets of three or four dozen mustard plasters in Paris at the start – American or English were best – and put them on our legs all night if they were painful. In bad weather we’
d put them over our livers.

  I was the first man to win the Tour using a derailleur gear. Until then they were banned, so we had two freewheel sprockets on each side of the wheel. You would stop and turn the wheel around to change gear, or move it with your fingers. You had to do it at the right moment or you could lose a race. If a good rider stopped to change gear, everyone would attack and he might never see them again.”

  1950s: Brian Robinson

  First Briton to finish the Tour, in 1955; first Briton to win a stage, in 1958. Now retired and living in Yorkshire.

  “The Tour was completely open to the public at the starts and finishes, nothing was cordoned off and we would sit in the village squares, waiting for the race to start, talking to the locals. Anyone who could speak English would just come along and practise it on me. The public could rub shoulders with Jacques Anquetil and Louison Bobet, the biggest stars of the day. The British fans would find us, tell us what hill they would be on and ask if we needed anything.

  We were always looking for water because we were restricted to two bottles at the start and another two in the bag we collected in the feed stations. We would ride into a town, try to find a cafe where no other riders had stopped, get water and ride on. If there was a fountain, everyone would stop, there would be bikes everywhere, you’d push to get your bottle under the tap, someone else would push it away.

  In the mountains, there was no road surface on the passes above the snowline, just gravel. I’ve seen guys stop, grab a handful of snow and stuff it down their jersey to cool down. The thing that I remember most was the noise. You’d be staying in a town centre and the partying would go on until 2am. Up in the mountains, with the crowds on either side, the noise in your ears would be tremendous.