OUTLANDISH DOPING EXCUSES
Cheaters getting caught is always fun, but not as fun as their often dubious, fanciful excuses as they try to wriggle out of their predicament. We discuss our favourites...
JOHN WHITNEY: I got to thinking about this subject after cheating came to eRacing. Cameron Jeffers was stripped of the inaugural British Cycling eRacing Championship in October after using a ‘bot’ to ride at 2000 watts to climb the necessary altitude to win the ‘Tron’ bike, the fastest on the game, which he then used at the national finals. He admitted to his error, but that’s not a common theme in professional cycling. When a rider gets busted, many go to extraordinary lengths to explain away their transgression. Let’s talk about our favourites...
PAUL ROBSON: It’s easy to see a failed test for cocaine, especially when it’s a classy rider, as a sign of off-bike excess rather than on-bike skulduggery but apparently it can be used as a masking agent so we’re probably wrong to laugh all those tests away. Gilberto Simoni was a classy rider, and he tested positive for cocaine in 2002. Having initially blamed his dentist for injecting it into him during treatment, he eventually resorted to the story that the drug was contained in some cough sweets that his aunt had brought him from South America. The best thing about this excuse is that it worked! He was cleared and returned to the peloton.
ROB MOXON: Mathieu van der Poel has undoubtedly been a great story of the 2019 season, but his dad, Adri van der Poel, had a great story too. He was a pro himself in the 1980s and in 1983 blamed a positive for strychnine on the pigeon pie he’d been served by his father-in-law - it was the pigeons who’d been given it. To be fair to him, it’s found in rat poison, although it has been known to be used as a stimulant for performance.
JOHN: Just a word on motor doping, which was one of those things that you couldn’t quite believe was true until someone got caught doing it. Femke van den Driessche was found to have a motor in her bike at the U23 cyclocross worlds in 2016. Like all the best cheating scandals she had an explanation for how what was found got there, which could only ever be believed by the person claiming it. In this case, she didn’t deny the motor but did deny it was her bike. It was accidentally switched with her friend’s bike in the pits. You’ve got at least some claim to plausible deniability with some cases of cheating – a dodgy supplement, or tainted beef steak in the case of Alberto Contador. But I can’t believe anybody would not notice a motor in their bike – that’s the whole point of ebikes! That it makes it easier! Either she believed she’d stumbled into the form of her life, or she knew she was on an ebike. I’m going with the latter. Anyway, she was banned for six years but it should have been longer.
PAUL: I want to talk about Riccardo Ricco. I always want to talk about Riccardo Ricco. I’m not totally sure how he fits in here because the best thing about Ricco is how utterly unrepentant he is, he would never bother with excuses. “I was only ever scared of being caught,” he told Gazzettadello
Sport when asked about the dangers of doping. Banned after testing positive for CERA EPO at the 2008 Tour (after two amazing stage wins, lest it be forgotten), the Italian bided his time, returned to the peloton with Vacansoleil in 2010, and was promptly fired the following year having been rushed to hospital for life-saving treatment after a botched, selfadministered blood transfusion at his home. Currently banned until 2024, and running an ice cream parlour in Tenerife after abandoning a plan to set a series of record times on cycling’s most famous climbs, he still has his eyes on a comeback. “I’ll be 40,” he has said, “I’ll be competitive.”
JOHN: You couldn’t do this list without mentioning Tyler Hamilton, the former US Postal teammate of Lance Armstrong. When he was busted for doping, in 2004, he blamed his positive for a blood transfusion on a claimed twin sibling, who died in the womb, and who was responsible for a different type of blood found in his system. It’s where doping excuses meet science fiction. Hamilton’s was the generation of the outrageous doping excuse.
ROB: Look no further than Floyd Landis for one of them. Landis blamed his high testosterone positive on the way to winning the 2006 Tour de France on a (mid-race) whisky binge. Whisky has made a lot of people do a lot of things but go on a 120km solo rampage at the Tour de France isn’t one of them.
“An excuse that could only ever be believed by the person claiming it”