the rider.
‘I lose my jersey. I lose my dream,’ he sobbed. ‘I lose my beard. Now I live a nightmare.’ Rachel put a supportive arm around his shoulder because there was no way she could massage his ego just then.
‘Oh,’ he wept, ‘I cannot return home. I must exile myself. How could I do this! To the team? To the sport? To my family? To the people of Italy!’
Rachel let the rider sob and rant, accepting it to be a fundamental requirement of her job. She listened attentively and said soothing things that he was incapable of hearing and which would have had little effect anyway. She would have liked to let her mind wander back to André, to how he made her body feel, to relish the excitement and anticipation she felt. But all that panoply would have to wait. She had a job to do. She changed Massimo’s dressings, did a little work on his shoulder, and made him hot milky malty cocoa to take to bed.
STAGE 17
Aix-les-Bains-Neuchâtel. 218.5 kilometres
What on earth are you doing, Ben? It’s just gone two in the morning and you’re creeping along the hotel corridor, listening hard at the doors of your riders. You’re opening the door to Luca and Didier’s room – why are you doing that? See, they’re both sleeping soundly. You can hear them breathing. So go. But you’re hovering and listening attentively – why?
I had to check something.
What?
That if Didier wasn’t dangling himself from a door frame, he was sleeping soundly.
You’re talking about EPO, aren’t you?
Yup, erythropoietin.
The recent drug of choice for cyclists?
Er, the tennis and athletics associations might do well to ferret around their sports too.
Doesn’t EPO simulate the advantages of altitude training on the body?
It’s a hormone produced naturally by the kidneys. Administered, it boosts the red blood cell count and increases the amount of oxygen that can be carried in the blood; as the bloodstream can transport more oxygen around the system, endurance is enhanced and aerobic capacity is increased.
It sounds wonderful.
Undoubtedly – when used by the medical profession to treat people with kidney failure, anaemia and alleviate the side-effects of some AIDS treatments.
How fantastic.
It can also turn the blood to jam. A few years ago, there was a spate of riders dying mysteriously in their sleep. Cyclists’ superfit hearts can pump at around 190 bpm and then rest as low as 30 bpm. That’s when EPO can become lethal. The slower the heartbeat, the thicker the blood, the quicker it begins to clot and the heart begins to stall. That’s why I wanted to check if Didier was hanging off a door, stretching out to thin his blood. That’s why I needed to listen to his breathing pattern in his sleep.
And he was OK, so why not go back to bed?
True, Didier is sleeping soundly but maybe he’s taken a good dose of aspirin. The danger of taking anticoagulants to thin the blood is the risk of haemorrhaging should Didier crash.
Do you think Didier is on something?
I don’t know. I really don’t. The thing with EPO is that it must be taken up to a week in advance and then every couple of days. He wasn’t well, if you remember, towards the end of the first week of the Tour.
But where would he get it?
Shady characters and clandestine deals aren’t restricted to grim alleyways and crack cocaine.
We’re talking about a banned substance, not a class A illegal drug. Doesn’t pro cycling have one of the longest lists of banned substances in professional sport?
Yes. However, riders can spout the disclaimer ‘I’ve never tested positive’ – that’s different from saying they’ve never used dope.
But isn’t this the sport with the most dope controls and the lowest number of positive tests?
Some riders will always seek ways to stay a step ahead of detection. Ever heard of Michel Pollentier? In the 1978 Tour, after he had taken the yellow jersey on L’Alpe D’Huez, he failed the dope test by attempting to pass off someone else’s urine concealed in a rubber tube hidden in his shorts.
That’s actually quite funny.
Yeah, right – did you hear the one about the cyclist who went to dope control and was told, ‘You’ve tested negative and congratulations, you’re also pregnant’?
Oh, very droll.
EPO, however, is for the most part undetectable – it is virtually impossible to tell the difference between a rider who has a naturally high haematocrit level because he trains at altitude and a rider whose levels are high because he’s pumped with EPO.
Can’t a limit be set?
The UCI, cycling’s governing body, have set one. But somewhat arbitrarily. If a rider’s red blood cell count is over 50 per cent, he is forced to take two weeks rest until his level is lower.
That’s a start.
Hardly. Say Didier’s natural haematocrit level is 42, and say Luca’s is naturally 48 – Didier can legally dope himself to Luca’s level, to within a hair’s breadth of the limit, suffer no penalties and reap the benefits of an artificially stimulated performance from a prohibited substance.
That’s cheating.
Correct.
So when does doping begin exactly?
Precisely.
And where does medical care end?
Exactly. Just before the infamous 1998 Tour – where brilliant riding was utterly overshadowed by the drugs scandal cum witch-hunt despite not one rider testing positive – well, another team approached me. The directeur made it very clear that I was to maximize the riders’ performances under stringent medical control.
What did that mean between the lines?
It meant that doping was part of team policy expressly to prevent the riders obtaining drugs for themselves and threatening their health in doing so.
You didn’t take the job, then.
God, no. I’m a conventional gentleman doctor and I’m also a romantic when it comes to sport – I like to admire supreme muscle tone without suspicion as to its provenance, to marvel at consummate athletic triumph without wondering if it’s synthetically enhanced.
Haven’t drugs always been synonymous with cycling?
In the 1930s, it was tiny doses of strychnine, soon enough and for a long time, amphetamines. Now EPO, human growth hormone. There’s PFC – a chemical relative of fucking Teflon. Oh, and the charming Belgian Pot.
Belgian Pot – surely a laid-back stoned cyclist is a contradiction in terms?
I’m not talking marijuana but a delightful combination of up to ten drugs – amphetamines, cocaine, heroin, analgesics, nasal or bronchial dilators, corticoids, morphine. Very pleasant.
Tell me that Belgian Pot isn’t rife?
It isn’t. But it’s there. Think of the pressures on a rider – not just the physical duress of three weeks, two mountain ranges and 4,000 k sandwiched between the equally taxing Giro D’Italia and the Vuelta Español. Consider