Doping at the Tour de France

In 1924 the journalist Albert Londres followed the Tour de France for the French newspaper, Le Petit Parisien. At Coutances he heard that the previous year's winner, Henri Pélissier, his brother Francis and a third rider, Maurice Ville, had pulled out after a row with the organiser, Henri Desgrange. Henri Pélissier explained the problem – whether or not he had the right to take off a jersey – and went on to talk of drugs, reported in Londres' race diary, in which he coined the phrase Les Forçats de la Route (The Convicts of the Road):

Henri Pelissier, 1919

"You have no idea what the Tour de France is", Henri said. "It's a Calvary. Worse than that, because the road to the Cross has only 14 stations and ours has 15. We suffer from the start to the end. You want to know how we keep going? Here..." He pulled a phial from his bag. "That's cocaine, for our eyes. This is chloroform, for our gums."

"This", Ville said, emptying his shoulder bag "is liniment to put warmth back into our knees."

"And pills. Do you want to see pills? Have a look, here are the pills." Each pulled out three boxes.

"The truth is", Francis said, "that we keep going on dynamite."

Henri spoke of being as white as shrouds once the dirt of the day had been washed off, then of their bodies being drained by diarrhoea, before continuing:

"At night, in our rooms, we can't sleep. We twitch and dance and jig about as though we were doing St Vitus's Dance..."

"There's less flesh on our bodies than on a skeleton", Francis said.[18]

Francis Pélissier said much later: "Londres was a famous reporter but he didn't know about cycling. We kidded him a bit with our cocaine and our pills. Even so, the Tour de France in 1924 was no picnic."[19][20]

On stage 12 of the 1955 Tour, the riders went over Mount Ventoux. Ten kilometres from the summit, said the journalist Jacques Augendre, French rider Jean Malléjac was: "Streaming with sweat, haggard and comatose, he was zigzagging and the road wasn't wide enough for him... He was already no longer in the real world, still less in the world of cyclists and the Tour de France."[19] Malléjac collapsed, falling to the ground with one foot still trapped in a pedal. The other leg pedalled on in the air. He was, said Pierre Chany, "completely unconscious, his face the colour of a corpse, a freezing sweat ran on his forehead.[12]

Malléjac was hauled to the side of the road by Sauveur Ducazeaux, an official of another team, and Dumas summoned. Georges Pahnoud of the Télégramme de Brest reported:

He had to force [Malléjec's] jaws apart to try to make him drink and it was a quarter of an hour later, after he had received an injection of solucamphor and been given oxygen, that Malléjac regained consciousness. Taken by ambulance, he hadn't however completely recovered. He fought, he gesticulated, he shouted, demanded his bike, wanted to get out.

Dumas had to strap Malléjac down for the journey to hospital at Avignon. Mallejac insisted that he had been given a drugged bottle from a soigneur, whom he did not name, and said that while his other belongings had reached the hospital intact, the bottle had been emptied and could not be analysed.[24] Malléjac insisted that he wanted to start legal proceedings, and Dumas said: "I'm prepared to call for a charge of attempted murder." The incident was never resolved, however, with Mallejac returning for subsequent Tours and denying any wrongdoing for the rest of his life.

In the 1960 Tour, Roger Rivière was second to the Italian Gastone Nencini, a rider he planned to beat by tagging along with him in the mountains and then speeding away on the flat. The problem was that Nencini was lighter and a better climber and that he was such a fast descender that, in the view of another French rider, Raphaël Géminiani, "the only reason to follow Nencini downhill is if you've got a death wish."

A monument recording the fall of Rivière.

Rivière was able to stay with Nencini on the climb to the Col de Perjuret, as the pair crossed the summit together. Then came a series of descending zigzags. Nencini took the perfect line and Rivière, trying to match him, overshot a bend, fell into a ravine, and broke his back. There he was found by his teammate, Louis Rostollan.

Rivière quickly passed the blame for his fall and his broken back on the team mechanic, accusing him of leaving oil on the wheels and the brakes for not working. The mechanic was outraged, and the doctors soon found the real reason – that so much painkiller was in Rivière's blood that his hands were too slow to operate the brakes. He had taken a heavy dose of the opioid painkiller dextromoramide (Palfium), to help him stay with Nencini on Col de Perjuret.[22] Rivière later admitted to being a drug addict, telling a newspaper how he had doped to beat the world hour record,[25] and admitted downing thousands of tablets a year.

The stage from Luchon to Carcassonne in 1962 set off 10 minutes later than scheduled because the German rider, Hans Junkermann, had been ill most of the night. At first he was not going to start. When he said that after all he felt well enough, the organisers gave him the extra time to get ready. Junkermann was leader of the Wiel's-Groene Leeuw team and was allowed his privilege because he was in eighth position.

Junkermann soon dropped to the back of the field and after 50 km he lost contact. On the first hill he got off his bike and sat by the roadside. "I ate bad fish at the hotel last night", he told onlookers. The same complaint came all day. A total twenty riders fell ill, and eleven others abandoned the Tour that day, including the former leader, Willy Schroeders, the 1960 winner Gastone Nencini and a future leader, Karl-Heinz Kunde.

Jacques Goddet wrote that he suspected doping but nothing was proven – other than that none of the hotels the previous night had served fish, the hoteliers being anxious to clear their reputation. Pierre Dumas spoke of "certain preparations" and speculated the riders were given the same tainted drug by one of the soigneurs.[22] Team managers grew angry at the several days of newspaper reporting that followed and came close to calling for a strike.

Testers arrived at the Tour de France for the first time in 1966, in Bordeaux, although only after word had spread and many riders had left their hotels. The first competitor they found was Raymond Poulidor, who became the first rider to be tested in the Tour. He said:

"I was strolling down the corridor in ordinary clothes when I came across two guys in plain clothes. They showed me their cards and said to me: 'You're riding the Tour?'

"I said: 'Yes'.

'You're a rider?'

"I said: 'Yes'.

'OK, come with us.'

"I swear it happened just like that. They made me go into a room, I pissed into some bottles and they closed them without sealing them. Then they took my name, my date of birth, without asking for anything to check my identity. I could have been anyone, and they could have done anything they liked with the bottles."[28]

A few other riders were found, including Rik Van Looy; some obliged and others refused. Next morning, the race left the city on the way to the Pyrenees and stopped in the suburb of Gradignan, in the university area of La House. The riders climbed off and began walking, shouting protests in general and in particular abuse at Pierre Dumas, whom some demanded should also take a test to see if he had been drinking wine or taking aspirin to make his own job easier.

Tom Simpson was the leader of the British team in the 1967 Tour de France. At the start of stage 13 on Thursday 13 July, he was still suffering the effects of a stomach bug he had endured earlier in the race. It was a blisteringly hot day, and he was seen to drink brandy during the early parts of the stage. In those years, the organisers limited each rider to four bottles of water each, about two litres – the effects of dehydration being poorly understood. During races, riders often raided roadside bars and cafes for drinks, and filled their bottles from fountains.

About two kilometres from the summit of the day's main climb, Mont Ventoux, Simpson began to zig-zag across the road, eventually falling against an embankment.While his team-car helpers wanted him to retire from the race, Simpson insisted on being put back on his cycle and he continued for another 500 m or so before again beginning to falter; he toppled unconscious into the arms of his helpers, still gripping his handlebars. A motorcycle policeman summoned Pierre Dumas, who took over team officials' first attempts at saving Simpson, including mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Dumas massaged Simpson's heart and gave him oxygen. A race helicopter then took Simpson to hospital but Simpson was declared dead soon after his arrival.

Drug usage was only hinted at in the news coverage, particularly by Jacques Goddet, who referred in L'Équipe to Simpson's "errors in the way he looked after himself." Then a British reporter, J. L. Manning, broke the news that two empty tubes and a third full of amphetamines were found in the pocket of his jersey.[29] Manning was a serious and well-respected journalist. His exposure, the first time a formal connection had been made between drugs and Simpson's death, set off a wave of similar reporting in Britain and elsewhere. The following month, Manning went further, in a piece headed "Evidence in the case of Simpson who crossed the frontier of endurance without being able to know he had 'had enough'":

The question of whether Tommy Simpson's death in the Tour de France might have been prevented has one clear answer. Yes, and it should have been. Three days after this year's race, the French authorities announced that next October and November a French and Italian rider would be prosecuted for alleged doping offences in last year's Tour. France had surrendered the need rigrously to prevent doping to the discreet requirement of not tackling it on a big tourist occasion until a year had safely passed. It takes two days at most to analyse samples: it took a year for France to authorise prosecutions.

[…] Is France trying to hush up the scandals of the Tour? I say yes. The first act of hushing up is not to attempt detection, let alone waiting a year before taking action. How much husher can you get?

Merckx at the 1974 World Cycling Championships held in Montreal.

During 1974, a number of riders failed tests for amphetamines, including Claude Tollet at the Tour. In 1977, a test for amphetamine-like drug Pemoline was perfected, catching five-time Tour de France winner Eddy Merckx among others. Far from abandoning drugs, riders and their helpers concentrated on finding alternatives that could not be detected. Five-time Tour de France winner Jacques Anquetil argued that stopping riders using amphetamine would not stop doping, but merely lead riders to use more dangerous drugs. In the 1970s, cycling moved into the steroid era. According to Dr Jean-Pierre de Mondenard, steroids were not used to build muscle bulk, but rather to improve recovery and thereby let competitors train harder and longer and with less rest. There is also a secondary stimulant effect.

De Mondenard argued that such was the acceptance of steroids and then of corticoids that only the cost – which he put in prices of the time as between 35,000 and 50,000 French francs – was likely to restrict use. Only the richest or the most ambitious riders could afford that. And the rewards could be high: Bernard Thévenet won the 1975 and 1977 Tour de France editions by using cortisone. "I was doped with cortisone for three years and there were many like me", he said.[30] The experience had ruined his health, he said.

Spanish rider Luis Ocaña failed tests in his last participation in the Tour de France in 1977 which was called the Tour of Doping.[31][32]

Testing took time to adapt, but in 1978 Belgian rider Jean-Luc van den Broucke failed tests for steroid use, and said:

In the Tour de France, I took steroids. That is not a stimulant, just a strengthener. If I hadn't, I would have had to give up. […] On the first rest day, before we went into the Pyrenees, I had a first hormone injection. I had another one on the second day, at the start of the last week. You can't call that medically harmful, not if it's done under a doctor's control and within reason.

There was a mass of steroids used in the Tour, everyone will admit that. How can we stay at the top otherwise? Even at Munich [at the world track championship] it was used a lot. I hope the riders will get together next season and take action. Who can ride classics and long-distance Tours the whole year through without strengtheners?[33]

Riders became adept at circumventing controls. Their advisers learned to calculate how long it would take a drug to move from blood into urine, and therefore how much time a rider could risk waiting before going to a drugs test. Sometimes, riders simply cheated, as was revealed to the world in 1978.

The rider was Michel Pollentier, who that year was the Belgian national champion and therefore wearing his national colours of red, yellow and black. By the end of the stage which finished on Alpe d'Huez he had taken the race lead and could change his champion's jersey for the yellow jersey as leader of the general classification.

Pollentier was called to the drugs test with José Nazabal and Antoine Gutierrez. Nazabal gave his sample but left the race that night. When Gutierrez went to provide his sample, the doctor – a man called Le Calvez spending his first day with the race – grew suspicious and tugged up his jersey, revealing a system of tubes and a bottle of urine. He then pulled down Pollentier's shorts and found him similarly equipped. Reports in the press called the supply of urine – somebody else's urine – as being in a bottle. Riders called it a "pear". In fact it was a condom. The tube ran from there to the riders' shorts so that pressure on the condom, held under the armpit, would give the impression of urinating.[34]

Pollentier's manager, Fred De Bruyne, who was in the test caravan, told a news conference:

I congratulated Michel and then sat down. On my left was Gutierrez, trying to provide a sample for the doctor, while Pollentier was in the other corner. They both had difficulty in urinating... Suddenly, the doctor cried out: 'What are you doing?' to Gutierrez. I looked round and saw there was some urine in the Frenchman's test flask and a small plastic tube in his hand. He was confused and tried to say the tube had been in his pocket. I was overcome with surprise and thought 'I'm glad he isn't one of my team'. But then, about a minute later, panic returned when the doctor pulled down Pollentier's shorts and revealed this plastic tube which you all now know about.[34]

The doctor said that Pollentier had not actually used the tube and so the test would go ahead as normal. At 8pm, the organiser, Félix Lévitan, told the press that the UCI had ruled that Pollentier would be fined 5,000 Swiss francs and start an immediate suspension of two months. The question was obvious: if a rider was prepared to take drugs and win a stage, knowing he would be tested, how many times had the ruse been shown to work before?

On 8 July 1998, French Customs arrested Willy Voet, a soigneur for the Festina team, for the possession of illegal drugs, including narcotics, erythropoietin (EPO), growth hormones, testosterone, and amphetamines. Voet later described many common doping practices in his book, Massacre à la Chaîne.[38] On 23 July 1998, French police raided several teams' hotels and found drugs in the possession of the TVM team. As news spread, riders staged a sit-down strike during the 17th stage. After mediation by Jean-Marie Leblanc, the director of the Tour, police agreed to limit the most heavy-handed tactics and riders agreed to continue. Many riders and teams had already abandoned the race and only 111 riders completed the stage. In a 2000 trial, it became clear that the management and health officials of Festina had organized drug-taking within the team. Richard Virenque, a top Festina rider, finally confessed after being ridiculed for maintaining that if he was doping he was somehow not consciously aware of it – as the satirical television programme, Les Guignols de l'Info, put it: "à l'insu de mon plein gré" ("of my own free will but without my knowing").

In the years following the 1998 Festina affair, anti-doping measures were put into effect by race organizers and the UCI, including more frequent testing and new tests for blood doping transfusions and EPO use. The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) was also created to help governments in anti-doping.

Evidence of drugs persisted and in 2004 came new allegations. In January, Philippe Gaumont, a rider with the Cofidis team, told investigators and the press that steroids, human growth hormone, EPO, and amphetamines were endemic to the team. In June, British cyclist David Millar, also of Cofidis, and time trial world champion, was detained by French police, his apartment searched and two used EPO syringes found. Jesus Manzano, a Spanish rider then recently dismissed by the Kelme team, told the Madrid sports newspaper AS he had been forced by his former team to take banned substances and that they had taught him to evade detection. The Kelme team itself was ultimately a casualty of the disclosures, which Manzano judged to be "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth."[39]

L'Équipe cover accusing Armstrong of doping. The title translates to "The Armstrong Lie". 23 August 2006.

Lance Armstrong has become a symbol for doping at the Tour de France. Suspicions arose initially over his association with Italian physician Michele Ferrari and his extraordinary achievements on the road. In 1999, Armstrong failed tests for a glucocorticosteroid hormone. Armstrong explained he had used an external cortisone ointment to treat a saddle sore and produced a prescription for it. The amount detected was below the threshold and said to be consistent with the amount used for a topical skin cream, but UCI rules required that prescriptions be shown to sports authorities in advance of use. Armstrong's former assistant, Mike Anderson, stated that Armstrong used a substance with a trade name similar to "androstenine". This resulted in a lawsuit against Anderson and a countersuit against Armstrong.[40]

In late August 2005, one month after Lance Armstrong's seventh consecutive Tour victory, the French sports newspaper L'Équipe claimed evidence that Armstrong had used EPO in the 1999 Tour de France.[41] The claim was based on urine samples archived by the French National Laboratory for Doping Detection (LNDD) for research. Armstrong denied using EPO and the UCI did not penalise him because of the lack of a duplicate sample. The UCI confirmed that its own doctor Mario Zorzoli leaked the 15 forms tying Armstrong to the failed tests to L'Équipe.

In October 2012 Armstrong was banned for life and stripped of all his titles since 1 August 1998, including all his Tour de France victories, because an investigation by USADA concluded that he had been engaged in a massive doping scheme.[42] He later admitted to doping in an interview with Oprah Winfrey.

Of the cyclists who finished on the podium in the era in which Lance Armstrong won the Tour de France seven times (1999–2005), Fernando Escartín is the sole rider not to be implicated in a doping scandal.[43] With "20 of the 21 podium finishers in the Tour de France from 1999 through 2005 directly tied to likely doping through admissions, sanctions, public investigations or exceeding the UCI hematocrit (a blood test to discover EPO use) threshold", Escartin's third-place finish in the 1999 Tour de France stands as the lone of the 21 podium finishes that was untainted, during the years (1999–2005) in which Lance Armstrong finished the Tour de France in first place.

An anti-doping banner displayed during the route of 2006 Tour de France prologue

In 2006, several riders, including Jan Ullrich and Ivan Basso, were barred from the eve of the race amid allegations by Spanish police as a result of their Operación Puerto investigation.[44]

The Astana-Würth team could not start because, despite a ruling by the Court of Arbitration for Sport, five of its nine Tour riders were barred after being officially named in the Operacion Puerto affair. With only four riders remaining (Alexander Vinokourov, Andrey Kashechkin, Carlos Barredo and Luis León Sanchez) the team did not have the minimum number of riders demanded by the rules to enter.[45]

The cyclists excluded from 2006 Tour de France were:

• Astana-Würth team:
  • Alberto Contador, cleared by Spanish court on 26 July 2006.[46]
  • Joseba Beloki, cleared by Spanish court on 26 July 2006.[46]
  • Allan Davis, cleared by Spanish court on 26 July 2006.[46]
  • Isidro Nozal, cleared by Spanish court on 26 July 2006.[46]
  • Sérgio Paulinho, cleared by Spanish court on 26 July 2006.[46]
• Individuals:
  • Ivan Basso, (CSC)
  • Francisco Mancebo, (AG2R Prévoyance)
  • Jan Ullrich, (T-Mobile Team)
  • Óscar Sevilla, (T-Mobile Team)

Floyd Landis at the 2006 Tour de France

On 27 July 2006, the Phonak team announced that Floyd Landis, winner of the 2006 Tour, failed a test after stage 17 for an abnormally high ratio of the hormone testosterone to epitestosterone. On the day the allegations were made public, Landis denied doping.[47] Landis' personal doctor later revealed the test had found a ratio of 11:1 in Landis' blood; the permitted ratio is 4:1.[48] On 31 July 2006, The New York Times reported that tests on Landis' sample revealed some synthetic testosterone.[49] He was later stripped of his title and banned from cycling for two years.[50]

The 2007 Tour de France was dogged by controversies from the start. On 18 July, two German television companies pulled out of coverage[51] after T-Mobile's German rider, Patrik Sinkewitz, failed a test for testosterone on 8 June at a pre-Tour training camp.

Alessandro Petacchi, a sprint specialist, failed a test for salbutamol at Pinerolo on 23 May in the 2007 Giro d'Italia, the day of the third of his five-stage wins in the event. Petacchi, an asthma sufferer, was suspended by Milram and forced to miss the Tour de France.[52] He was later cleared after the drug was deemed to be therapeutic use.[53]

On 19 June it was revealed that the leader, Michael Rasmussen, was under suspicion for missing two out-of-competition doping tests. The Dane had been dropped by the Danish Cycling Union and his Olympic place was under review.[54] However, with information available at the time, Rasmussen had not committed an offence under UCI rules[55] and he remained in the yellow jersey. On 8 November Rasmussen admitted providing false information to the UCI.[56]

Then on 24 July it was revealed that Alexander Vinokourov had failed a test for blood doping after the time trial in Albi, which he won by more than a minute[57] As a result, the Astana Team withdrew. Vinokourov's teammates Andreas Klöden and Andrey Kashechkin were fifth and seventh at the time. Vinokourov also failed tests for blood doping after winning Monday's stage 15.

Following the Vinokourov announcement, Tour director Christian Prudhomme said professional cycling needed a "complete overhaul" to combat doping.[58]

A day later, after winning the 16th stage on the Col d'Aubisque—a victory that assured he would be the overall winner—it was alleged that Rasmussen had lied to his Rabobank team about his whereabouts on 13 and 14 June, prior to the Tour. For breaching team rules, he was removed from the race. It was later revealed that the Tour organiser, Amaury Sport Organisation, had pressed Rabobank to remove Rasmussen. On the same day, Team Cofidis pulled out following the failed test on their rider Cristian Moreni.[59]

The Tour continued to be embroiled in doping controversies even after it finished. It emerged that Spanish cyclist (and 16th placed rider) Iban Mayo had failed a test for EPO on the second rest day, on 24 July. He was suspended by his team Saunier Duval-Prodir.[60] Mayo had previously failed tests for synthetic testosterone during the 2007 Giro d'Italia,[61] but the UCI found that he had not breached any doping regulation.[62]

Tour winner Alberto Contador also continued to be linked to doping allegations, focussing on his relationship with Eufemiano Fuentes and his role in Operación Puerto, but without new revelations.[63][64] Contador was tested in the Tour after stages 14, 17, and 18 and no discrepancies were reported. Several participants, such as Sébastien Hinault, implied that he is no better than Rasmussen.[65] On 30 July German doping expert Werner Franke accused him of having taken drugs in the past.[66]