‘You can’t control the result, whether people are doping or not, but you can control doing your best and leaving it all out there on the road’
DThe rider knows and I’ll always be able to look at myself in the mirror
URING his 14 years as one of the toughest and most admired cyclists in the professional peloton, Dan Martin knew that there were competitors taking shortcuts. He realised doping was going on. But his mindset was to not think about it. To concentrate on what he could do.
‘When a rider thinks about the doping taking place around them, they have four possible options,’ Martin writes in his new autobiography, Chased by Pandas: My Life in The Mysterious World of Cycling. ‘A. Practise the sport in a despondent and defeatist state of mind. B. Quit the Sport. C. Turn to doping. D. Avoid thinking about it. I chose option D. I knew doping was taking place, but I didn’t let that knowledge taint my way of thinking.’
Martin deals with the thorny issue of doping early in his fascinating take on life in the peloton and insists during all his time as a top pro, he never witnessed cheating taking, nor was he ever offered a banned product – or saw one being consumed.
‘That’s the truth,’ Martin says down a phone line from his home in Andorra. ‘Maybe, guys knew not to offer me anything, but it didn’t come into my orbit. But as I say in the book, I knew it was taking place. It just wasn’t taking place near me.
‘Is it still going on? Nobody is ever going to be able to say that it’s not. In any sport, you are never going to completely eliminate cheating, But I know that guys can compete cleanly in the sport, because I was able to compete. If guys like myself are still able to be competitive, then the sport is doing something right,’ he points out.
Martin’s mental strength and toughness were two of his greatest attributes on the bike and it is what led him to join a select group of Irish cyclists, alongside Sam Bennett and Shay Elliott, who have won stages on each of the Grand Tours. That mental strength is also surely needed when you are racing in the knowledge that some of your rivals are doping.
‘I don’t know,’ Martin counters. ‘I actually think I was fortunate to come into the sport at a time when doping was on the way down. And I always focused on my own performance, rather than the result. You can’t control the result, whether people are doping or not, but you can control doing your best and leaving everything out there. And that is what I did, that’s how I handled it.
‘You don’t know what is going on behind the closed doors of other teams, so why worry about it? The only person who knows is the rider himself and I was always able to look myself in the mirror in that regard.’
As Martin relates in the book, he was wary of even taking a sleeping pill. But cynicism will always be around the sport, especially now that the times and speeds in the top races are even quicker. However, looking on now as a retired cyclist, Martin feels there is a simple reason behind that.
‘There’s always going to be rumours around the peloton and I know that people are questioning the speeds and performances recently in the top races, but I know that in my last couple of years competing, my performances improved hugely because my equipment improved and my nutrition improved. If I had those improvements five years earlier, I might have won a Grand Tour.’
Like all the best memoirs, Chased By Pandas reflects Martin’s personality. While he was considered one of the toughest competitors in the world’s most gruelling sport, he did his best not to lose his humour and sense of fun. And that is what he wanted to convey in the book, because he feels that cycling has become far too earnest.
‘I wanted to do something different because a lot of cycling books are very serious. Maybe that is because it is such a serious and dramatic sport,’ he suggests. ‘But I wanted to show that there is a different side to it. Yeah, the sport is suffering but it is not all about suffering. There is a sense of fun about it, too. I am very passionate about the sport, and I wanted to show that side of it. Suffering in the saddle for four or five hours is not all there is to it.’
That sense of fun is illustrated by the title of the book, which refers to a random fan in full panda suit giving chase to Martin as he claimed the iconic one-day classic, Liege-Bastogne-Liege. As he reflected back over his career, all the stage wins in the Grand Tours and top ten GC finishes in those races as well as representing Ireland at three different Olympics, what still stands out is claiming the Liege nine years ago.
‘When you are in the middle of your career, it is just a race that you won and you move on to the next, because the season is so fast. But now that I am retired, I can look back and see how big some of my wins were,’ Martin says. ‘The Liege is one of the most prestigious races in the world, some of the greatest riders ever haven’t managed to win it. Now I can appreciate what that is. It is incredible to win a stage in the Tour de France, but there are 21 of those every year, while the classics are special, because there are on their own, a single day.’
For being considered one of the bravest cyclists in the peloton, it is interesting that fear pervades his book. The chapters in the book are broken into fears: The Fear of Doping, the Fear of Stopping, the Fear of Destroying Your Body.
And he feels that fear is all over the peloton. ‘Riders are afraid of crashing. They are afraid of their teammates being too weak or their rivals being too strong. They were afraid of taking too many risks or not enough, afraid of producing the wrong attack or not pushing hard enough. Afraid of losing or of winning. Afraid of being afraid,’ he writes insightfully at one point.
In the last chapter, Martin reveals a genuine fear of mortality that he had early in his career, when he had to undergo scans for a suspected brain tumour. He dropped out of the Tour of Britain as he waited for the results. When it’s suggested that this episode helped nurture the mental strength that was such a trait of his career, Martin is not convinced.
‘It turned out to be nothing, so I don’t know,’ he says. These days, Martin does a bit of media work, and works with companies to develop bikes.
He still likes to ride but it is not the only thing in his life. He has two young kids to look after. ‘And I don’t have to go for a cycle. If I want, I can go for a run. There’s a great freedom in that,’ he says.
Suffering in the saddle for five hours is not all there is to it. There is fun
■Chased by Pandas: My Life in the Mysterious World of Cycling is published by Quercus and available now.