This article first appeared in the Jan/Feb 2013 issue of World Gaming magazine.
As the lid is blown-off one of the biggest scandals in sporting history, more than just the athlete’s credibility is at stake. The investigation into Lance Armstrong’s proven use of performance enhancing drugs has opened a Pandora’s box of lies, cover-ups, bully tactics and incompetent governance. Will it be backpedalling and repentance or cowardice and damnation for the sport of cycling?
Traditionally a euro-centric sport, cycling has enjoyed a global surge in popularity over the last 15 years. Multiple-day stage races such as the three-week Tour De France, hi-tech timetrial style bikes, and superhuman battle royals on the slopes of the Alpine and Pyrenean mountain ranges have captured the imagination of young and old alike. The massive increase in participation has resulted in the multi-million dollar cycling industry cashing in as never before.
However, whether we like it or not, the ugly truth is that professional cycling is a dirty sport. Its view in the public eye, especially through the 1999 to 2005 Armstrong era and beyond, has moved from a heroic spectacle to a devious, win-at-all-costs farce. The recent exposure of the truth is one thing, but the cowardly and arrogant reaction demonstrated by a number of stakeholders is a slap in the face to the industry and its fans.
Now it’s time to point the finger at the culpable and place the ball in their respective courts to own up, come clean, rat out the guilty and implicit parties, and bring the sport into a new era. The alternative course of action is for them to continue to do what they have been doing for years – only now their secrets aren’t so secret. They are guilty and have no chance of redemption until they either prove otherwise (which is exceedingly unlikely) or confess and move on.
From left to right: Chief whistle-blower Tyler Hamilton and Floyd Landis
Who am I pointing the finger at? Obviously Lance Armstrong and the US Postal Service Pro Cycling Team lead by manager and doping aficionado Johan Bruyneel. But also the governing body of international cycling, the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI), that has for decades turned a blind eye and hidden behind strategically placed red tape. The UCI has held a knife to the riders’ throats, silencing them from speaking out by supporting and upholding the professional peloton omertà.
Beyond Armstrong and the UCI there are many who have chosen to lay low instead of making a stand, sometimes for fear of their own undoing. Governing bodies, sponsors, team managers, race promoters and past and present riders all bear the burden.
THE VOLCANO ERUPTS
The issue of performance enhancing drugs in cycling may have started as a snowball, but it has developed into an avalanche. The snowball started rolling in 2005 when the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) alleged that Armstrong was at the heart of the most sophisticated doping program in the history of sport. USADA conducted an exhaustive inquiry which resulted in a report of more than 1,000 pages, a detailed summary of which is available online at http://cyclinginvestigation.usada.org. The report comprehensively proved that not only was Armstrong a serial doper but he bullied other team-mates into taking performance enhancing drugs, shunned those who refused, engaged in detection avoidance methods and employed an entourage of doctors and supporters in a longrunning cover-up. USADA stated:
The evidence shows beyond any doubt that the US Postal Service Pro Cycling Team ran the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen …
[Armstrong’s] goal led him to depend on EPO [erythropoietin], [the anabolic steroid] testosterone and blood transfusions but also, more ruthlessly, to expect and to require that his team-mates would likewise use drugs to support his goals if not their own … or be replaced.
USADA presented as matter-of-fact reality that winning and doping went hand in hand in cycling and Armstrong’s teams were the best at getting it done without being caught. Although having never officially failed a doping test, Armstrong was banned for life by USADA in August, after Armstrong announced he would not fight the doping charges.
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Performance enhancing drugs explainedLANCE ARMSTRONG, PLEASE STAND UP
The case against Armstrong is damning, but the situation is made even worse by his reaction to it. Armstrong has repeatedly and vehemently denied cheating. His attorney, Tim Herman, called the report:
… a one-sided hatchet job … a taxpayer funded tabloid piece rehashing old, disproved, unreliable allegations based largely on axe-grinders, serial perjurers, coerced testimony, sweetheart deals and threat-induced stories.
Aware of the criticism his agency faced from Armstrong and his legion of followers, USADA chief executive, Travis Tygart, insisted his group handled this case under the same rules as any other.
Doping duo Lance Armstrong and Johan Bruyneel enjoying their "success"
The evidence against Armstrong is overwhelming. The USADA statement named 11 former team-mates who testified against him during their inquiry: Frankie Andreu, Michael Barry, Tom Danielson, Tyler Hamilton, George Hincapie, Floyd Landis, Levi Leipheimer, Stephen Swart, Christian Vande Velde, Jonathan Vaughters and David Zabriskie.
The first of Armstrong’s key accusers were Landis and Hamilton, both of whom had fought losing battles against their own doping charges, and could thus be called non-credible by the Armstrong camp. But what is striking about USADA’s report is the sheer weight of evidence it contains, backed up by sworn affidavits from former teammates, friends and colleagues with no such stain on their integrity.
These brave riders have to my mind set both an example to the man they testified against, and a precedent for other past and present riders to follow. Now is the time for Armstrong to follow those who helped him “win” in the greater fight to save cycling, his own name, and the faith of those whose lives he has helped. As it stands, Lance Armstrong in his silence represents the pusillanimous attitude that has brought the sport to its knees.
THE FARCICAL UCI
The UCI woefully blundered its way through the first opportunity to change its ways after the “Festina Affair” in 1998, and admittedly took steps in the right direction after “Operación Puerto” eight years later.
With the dethroning of Armstrong by USADA there has been renewed hope that authentic and lasting change is possible. But the UCI led now by Pat McQuaid and formerly by Hein Verbruggen, seems intent on continuing the charade and risks botching yet another watershed moment.
UCI president Pat McQuaid
By encouraging a “code of silence” within the peloton, the UCI has helped drugs pervade the sport, in violation of not only the UCI’s own constitution but the Olympic oath which both Verbruggen and McQuaid have taken.
McQuaid has even gone as far as to arrogantly suggest the riders and teams extend an apology to the UCI! It should be McQuaid doing the apologizing for years of irresponsible governance as cycling’s integrity plummeted at the hands of doping scandals. Responding to criticisms by professional cycling team Garmin-Sharp’s David Millar, McQuaid refused to apologize for the UCI’s alleged complacency towards Armstrong’s doping during his dominant years.
Millar served a two-year ban for EPO use, and is now one of the sport’s most outspoken antidoping advocates.
McQuaid should also apologize to Tyler Hamilton after labelling him and fellow doping confessor, Floyd Landis, “scumbags”. Responding to McQuaid’s dig, Hamilton said, “Pat McQuaid’s comments expose the hypocrisy of his leadership and demonstrate why he is incapable of any meaningful change … Pat McQuaid has no place in cycling.”
As media pressure mounts, five European newspapers have issued a joint manifesto calling for “immediate reform and a new future for professional cycling.” The papers, The Times of London, L’Equipe, La Gazzetta dello Sport, Het Nieuwsblad and Le Soir, pronounced themselves “alarmed and deeply concerned by the grave situation facing this sport”. They called for a number of reforms, including the creation of an independent panel by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) to investigate the UCI’s role in the Armstrong debacle.
The revelations by USADA include the UCI accepting US$125,000 in payments from Lance Armstrong himself, covering up a suspect test for EPO from Armstrong, and ignoring and/or discrediting the few riders with guts enough to offer information, a direct violation of the UCI’s own ethical code.
CYCLING’S CURRENT CROP AWFULLY QUIET
The lack of comment by most of the current riders regarding the Armstrong saga suggests the omertà is still alive and well, and the peloton is still ruled by fear of the UCI’s wrath. Or is it the fear of having their own veils of secrecy torn away? After all, it would be naïve to believe the cyclists who were active in the late 1990s and early to mid 2000s were clean then, or are clean now.
There is certainly suspicion in the media surrounding the meteoric rise of British cyclists.
Bradley Wiggins, reigning Tour De France champion and time-trial gold medallist from the 2012 London Olympic Games, himself said in 2007, as his French Cofidis team pulled out of the Tour following another drug scandal, “You cannot blame people for doubting the credibility of the sport for the next five, six or seven years.” Five years on, Wiggins has improved beyond recognition and he and his fellow Team Sky riders have been compared to Armstrong’s dominant US Postal squad. Wiggins has changed his tune remarkably, recently dismissing those who suggested doping could be a factor with powerful expletives, calling them “fucking wankers”.
Cadel Evans, the 2011 Tour De France winner
Cadel Evans, the 2011 Tour De France winner, raced mountain bikes for the now defunct Italian Mapei team where, according to documents from 2007, riders were systematically taking drugs such as EPO, testosterone, anabolic steroids and most likely synthetic insulin. Anecdotal evidence suggests every single member of that team was doping! Mapei won around 1,000 professional road races over ten years against teams who are now proven dopers. We can add the currently active Swiss time-trialling super-star, Fabian Cancellara, to that list. He too was a Mapei Man.
Evans recently confessed to having met with disgraced Italian sports doctor, Michele Ferrari, a key conspirator in the Armstrong doping case, but says it was merely to conduct a field test of his road-riding abilities. At least Cadel Evans has the support of lead whistle blower, Tyler Hamilton, who insists Evans won the tour as a “clean” rider. I certainly hope so for cycling’s sake.
Time will reveal the extent of today’s riders’ involvement with performance enhancing drugs. Once again, for the good of the sport, hearing it straight from the horse’s mouth would at least preserve some of their collective integrities.
| Infamous Tour De France scandals |
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Alberto Contador served a two year ban for drug-cheating
ANYONE ELSE? YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE
I’ll make a few suggestions:
- USA Cycling should have condemned Lance Armstrong. Instead, no doubt fearing a UCI backlash, they hid behind the international governing body’s waffle, stating they were obliged to agree with and support the opinions of the UCI as it challenged the jurisdiction of USADA over Armstrong.
- Former “champion” riders such as Migual Indurain and Alberto Contador (himself banned for two years for drug-cheating) could and should assist the sport in its darkest hour. Instead, they insist on supporting Armstrong. “Even now I believe in his innocence. He has always respected all the rules,” stated Indurain, a five-time winner of the Tour De France during the undetectable 1990s.
- The Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO), which organises the Tour De France, Giro D’Italia (tour of Italy) and the Vuelta a España (tour of Spain), is the most profitable entity in the sport, yet commits less than one percent of its profits towards anti-doping measures. Enough avoidance and pretending! Step up and do something!
ALEA IACTA EST: THE DIE IS CAST
Just as Julius Caesar led his legions across the Rubicon River in 49 BC, the world of cycling has its own river it must cross, and having done so, not go back. Through a collective effort of the UCI and respective national governing bodies, riders past and present, sponsors, team management and the ASO, the scourge of performance enhancing drugs must be stamped out. It would be a travesty for a sport with the potential to inspire and unite to be reduced to a laughing stock in a world that respects integrity and loathes moral turpitude. As Caesar himself said, “Let us go where the omens of the Gods and the crimes of our enemies summon us! The die is cast!”
