There are only two occasions you ever hear of a professional cyclist being mentioned on the news: if he wins the Tour de France or if he was caught doping. Unfortunately, it seems that since the TdF only has one winner each year, most of the publicity around cycling revolves around EPO, Clenbuterol or some other weird-sounding banned substances. Worse yet, when a cycling star finally landed a one-hour special on Oprah, it was to confess that he doped throughout most of his career! It seems that there is no escape, and since this blog is about cycling, we have to shine the spotlight into this darkest corner of our sport!
Before I go on, please be advised that I am not making any excuses or condoning the use of any banned substance by cyclists - explaining is not approving it!
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Riding 4000kms in 3 weeks - not for the average human being!
(image by Andrei I. Loas / Wikimedia) |
CYCLING IS HARD! Professional cycling is really hard! As in "not-human" hard! Professional cyclists are expected to race their bicycles throughout entire countries - 200kms (120miles) everyday for three weeks straight! This weekend, there is a one-day race from Milan to San Remo which is 290km (180miles) long and since it doesn't go through any high mountains, it's considered a relatively easy race within the pro-cycling circles (so much so, that the organizers add in detours through mountains some years to make things more interesting). Last month, some professional cyclists were racing in 48C (118F) heat in the desert and this week, those same cyclists were racing on a snow blizzard in the high mountains of Italy. People go crazy when a tennis match goes on for over 4 hours, but in cycling, racing for 5 or 6 hours is just a normal day in the office! The demands on cyclists' bodies is such that Jacques Anquetil, one of the sports' last century greats, was once quoted as saying "You'd have to be an imbecile or hypocrite to imagine that a professional cyclist who rides 235 days a year can hold himself together without stimulants." Again, I am not trying to make excuses, but when you see the super human efforts that are expected by cyclists, one can see why some of them try to find a way to "recuperate faster" by cheating.
A bike race can be very competitive - check out this
video for a new perspective on the sport!
SMALL MARGINS - Did you know that you can buy a faster set of bicycle wheels for $3000 dollars? That's just for the wheels, no bike attached! And the return on investment will probably be somewhere around 3% on speed performance! But in cycling, 3% is huge, and those fancy wheels actually sell! Professional cyclists are on the limit of their natural ability and any measurable improvement will pay back dramatically on a race. A 10% increase in cycling performance would be unimaginable, yet a jump from a .240 to .264 batting average (baseball) or a jump from 20 to 22 goals in a season (soccer) would really not be that significant.
CYCLISTS ARE COMPETITIVE - Click on that video above and take a look at how competitive cyclists can be. That competitive nature and willingness to do anything to get ahead carries on outside the race as well. Cyclists lose all possible weight in order to be as lean as possible (all the way down to the 5% essential body fat). They will train in high altitude camps in order to increase their red blood cell volumes. They will even try sleeping in homemade hyperbaric chambers to get an edge!
As professionals, they will spend months away from home and in most cases, not have any real money to show for all that work. And hundreds of the fastest amateurs would do everything they can just for the opportunity to join the pro-ranks. The key is that they must be willing to do
anything to get ahead.
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He might've had the biggest fall, but Lance was not alone!
(image by Paul Coster / Wikimedia) |
IT'S NOT ALL ABOUT LANCE - That interview on Oprah was not only about Lance Armstrong admitting he was a cheater. The report and accusations that brought him disgrace also included admissions from many of his former teammates. Basically, almost every American professional cyclist racing in Europe during the Armstrong era has now admitted to doping. But it goes further than that. Lance's main rival during his Tour de France victories was the German Jan Ullrich, who has also confessed to doping. It is the general consensus that many, if not most, cyclists during the time which became known as the EPO era, were on the juice. But it goes further than that. From time to time, you hear within cycling publications, that even amateur cycling racers get caught doping in local races. But it goes even further than that. When you look back at the history of the sport, many legends and heroes of the sport, Coppi, Anquetil, even Merckx have had their names tarnished by doping cases. The sad reality of it is that until recently, a culture of doping has had its way within the sport of cycling. And only within the last decade or so, cycling has really gotten serious about changing itself.
IT'S NOT ALL ABOUT CYCLING - Cycling seems to be the black-sheep of sports when it comes to doping, but this is not well-deserved. Baseball has had many of its modern day legends implicated in doping scandals. And a Pro-Bowl All Star football player (that's American Football) was caught doping a few months ago and received a
4-game suspension! Cycling, on the other hand, enforces a
2-year ban for any doping case. Cycling has cracked down very hard on doping and has become really efficient at catching dopers. All professional cyclists must provide their whereabouts at all times and be willing to be subject to drug testing any day of the year (whether or not they are racing that day). The only exception is from 11pm to 6am, but even that is now subject to change. With the introduction of a "Biological Passport" for each athlete, a cyclist does not even need to be caught with a banned substance in his system, but any abnormal variation in their blood values will result on an investigation, even if their drug tests were clean. In other words, they are trying! The sport itself recently released the "Cycling Independent Reform Commission" Report (you can download this interesting read in its entirety
here) detailing how bad things were in the past, how they are today and suggestions to eliminate any remnants of the doping culture from the sport.
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| My daily cycling supplement: 2 gummy bears! |
I am convinced that professional cycling today is as clean as it has ever been, and that it is no worse than most professional sports. But the cynic in me does not believe that it is an absolutely clean sport. Any abnormally great performance is unfortunately greeted with my skepticism, but I think that's the price the sport must pay for years of cheating. I am also hopeful that the continuing efforts the sport itself is making will result in fewer and fewer bad apples.
For me, the essence of cycling is honesty. You and your bike against any limits, any elements, any mountains. Getting the best out of yourself is what it's all about, and cheating defeats the purpose of cycling at all! I do however admit that I do take my 2 gummy bears every day!
