Competitive Cycling is a beautiful sport. In Europe at the top level, the riders are privileged to race in some of the most scenic and awe inspiring regions the continent and endure challenges like no other sport knows of. Three week races that cover snow capped mountain passes and one day races which can be as long as 250km and pass over brutal mud masked roman cobbled roads. It is a tough sport with few rewards. The combination of very hard work and little reward for all but the elite spawned a doping culture which has drastically changed the sport and how society views the professional sport of cycling.

Elite level cycling has a very bad image. It is one of the sports which has had the most problems with sports enhancing drugs and continues to have problems with it. In the past 3 years, the final podium of the Tour De France has fielded a rider who has tested positive for a doping product, the winner of the 2006 Tour de France; positive. Michael Rasmussen a Dane was within days of standing atop the top step of the podium in Paris in 2007 when he lied to drug testers about his actions prior to the tour and later tested positive for a banned substance. This year the rider who ended up in third place in Paris, Bernard Kohl an Austrian, tested positive for a banned substance. The world’s largest sporting event is riddled with these cheats and it is greatly affecting the sport of cycling and sports and society in general. 

What is unique about the sport of cycling is the openness and lack of barriers in the sport, close contact with the sporting greats is easy. The races are free to attend since they are held on public roads, the pros train on the same roads we drive on to get to work and before and after races there are no stadium corridors and change rooms to hide out in.  European Pro cyclists aren’t just images on TV and in magazines to many people young and old, these are the riders they may see riding around their local roads or having lunch break in the local pub. How must it feel to a young aspiring cyclist when he sees a highly ranked pro training on the same roads? How does he feel after he finds out that the same local pro cyclist tested positive for doping agents at a major international race? He would probably feel really bad, not because the local hero was a cheat, but because what he thought was possible on grit and will apparently wasn’t enough for the local pro. This is what doping does to the future of the sport; it causes lack of hope to hopeful cyclists and loss of fan base. Why would fans want to watch men pumped up with drugs riding around? They want to see real men battling the mythic mountain passes on their own power and will, not being boosted along by the contents of the syringes their corrupt coaches force them to take. 

Most of the time pro cyclists don’t do the drugs just for the glory or because “everyone else is doing it”, they have personal reasoning. The biggest influencing factor comes down to money and team needs. Cycling teams are run by corporate sponsors who use the sport as an advertising venue, top tier pro team jerseys are really just moving billboards. Companies and teams do whatever they can do have their teams riders plastered on covers of newspapers or on TV. Doping is viewed as a sort of insurance against poor performance, because why would a large company invest 12 million dollars into a team that doesn’t get results and publicity? Doping comes down very rarely to a rider just wanting to improve for the sake of improving, he always has motive, a motive which is often influenced by what’s around him. 

Professional cycling isn’t a very lucrative, starting salary is 35 000 dollars and only the top pros make six figures and only a select few make in the millions. Bernard Kohl who came third in this years tour de France and tested positive a couple weeks later claimed that “I succumbed to temptation. The pressure was incredibly strong. I am only a human being and in this exceptional situation, I showed weakness” his exceptional situation being that his team was going to shutdown at the end of the year and Kohl would be without a job. He decided to dope so that he could perform well and have some sort of job security for next year. Many cyclists who test positive who admit their actions claim that it’s because of the pressures and expectations their team bosses thrust upon them , as famed Scottish cyclist David Millar said about his doping acts, “I was just facing up to my responsibilities, thinking that I owed something to my team. I was getting paid a lot of money to guarantee my results”. is this really different of what goes on in civilian jobs? Bosses want deadlines met or certain amount of tasks done in a day, and as a result many civilian workers use drugs (caffeine, diet pills ect.) in their line of work to perform better. How come they aren’t seen as cheaters? If a teacher could take a pill to make them teach better and gain a raise, would they? Once a rider sees cycling as a job and not a passionate living then he will be more likely to think of what doping could do for him, as David Millar said, “The moment you dope you become 10 times more professional. You say, ‘this is no longer sport, this is my job’.” The social norms that have been put into place about how people are expected to live hasn’t helped much either, we are bombarded with ads of nice homes, sleek sedans and tidy family vacations to upper class destinations. When you are a pro cyclist whose on-bike career won’t likely go past his mid thirties, you are making a sufficient salary and all you’ve done all you life is ride a bike, there isn’t a retirement like most of us would like to have, you still have to form the life you imagined you’d have, even on the tiny pension (if you receive one) that you have. Maybe better results late in your career could give a boost in your bank account and allow your children a better education or a secure retirement until you find some other work. This probably goes through the mind of many older pros, they want to conform to how society lives, but with a short career and the majority of pros on smaller pays, life isn’t really glamorous. 

The widespread use of performance enhancing drug in cycling has led society to lose a lot of respect for the sport even though the sport is trying its hardest to clean up its act. A few weeks ago German television networks said they would not air the 2009 tour de France on TV due to doping scandals as the chairman of the German television network ARD Fritz Raff said “the sporting value has dropped considerably due to the many doping cases… The value of broadcast has decreased”. Even the high profile Tour of Germany race has been called off in 2009 due to the doping problems. Not only is coverage being axed, sponsors are having second thoughts of investing in a sport that may have a lot of bad publicity attached to it. Many teams are folding due to the difficulty of finding new sponsors leaving more cyclists without certain jobs and giving them more temptations to dope. 

 Many people think that the solution to doping is drug testing and that the more tests the better, that works okay to catch the cheats, but catching the users is only half of the equation in the fight against doping. Italian rider, Riccardo Ricco who was caught doped said that “Of the 10 controls (blood/urine tests) taken; only two were positive. In theory all the tests should have been positive; therefore the method needs to be checked,” In cycling the testing is very vast, 6501 blood and urine tests being dished out in a season. If what Ricco says is true, then how many of those tests taken were really accurate? Drug testing doesn’t always prove who’s clean or not, and it isn’t the way to solve the main problem, even if a rider is caught and suspended, the usual punishment is a two year suspension; which isn’t so strong as to scare riders away from exploring Spanish pharmacies. Suspending the cheaters is quite merited, but at the same time, a lot of doped riders do it for non-selfish purposes; to help support their family, ensure a job for next season, to pay for tuition fees for older children. Can we blame them really? Can other riders criticize their actions? The reasons behind it can be very selfless. Not all riders do it just for the glory of reaching the top of a peak first.

The big picture of  doping needs to be addressed, such as the pressure put upon a rider, the un-human like expectations for certain riders, the lack of job security and peace of mind knowing that if injured and recovery is slow, the rider won’t be left without a contract for next season. Once the sport can create a more stress free environment, doping will go down at a much higher rate. One team which is taking a proactive step to combating doping is Team Garmin/chipotle, a US based team which contains most of Canada’s highest level cyclists and some local Vancouver riders. Team Garmin is performing thorough internal testing; a base profile of blood values and test results can be stored and checked for spikes or odd findings. Instead of the nine average tests a year that most pros get from race organizers, Garmin riders are subjected to a minimum of 26 blood and urine tests from team officials. Not many teams are taking these stringent measures, but to restore the confidence of fans, the public, sponsors and aspiring athletes these sorts of programs are needed. Team Garmin (which is currently the team of David Millar) are confident their riders are clean; to prove it all the drug/urine test results for their riders are available to media outlets. This is the sort of steps needed to be taken to ensure confidence in the sport, maintain key sponsors and let the public know that efforts are being made to ensure fairness in the sport. The team doesn’t just perform testing to combat doping; they also advocate clean riding and seek to better the environment to develop riders

As an aspiring cyclist myself who dreams of attaining the top level of the sport, the doping issues bothered me, But as I learnt more and more about the issue I learnt that it is possible without drugs and that the sport is doing its best to clean up and riders themselves are getting tired of what their peers are doing behind closed doors. Seeing pro cyclists, such as world championship silver medalist and Beijing Olympian Svein Tuft ( who is a Langley resident) achieve top level success while riding clean is inspiring, it shows willpower and proper training can lead to great things. I have also learned a great deal of what goes on behind the scenes in the sport of cycling and how come many pros were lead to doing the dope. Historians have always said that learning about our past can allow us to not make the same mistakes twice. I hope the sport of cycling will learn from its problems and its past and implement changes that will make the sport more genuine and cause a resurgence in confidence in people who have lost trust in the sport and its participants. 

Written by : Aidan Mouellic