Cycling 16 February 1949
Demands for better Worlds courses and an end to doping
In his article entitled ‘Wanted! A World Road Championships Worthy of the Name,’ British-born French cycling journalist Victor Breyer did not hold back. The point of the article was to call for better courses for the professional World Championships and a better calendar of races in the build-up.
His claim was that without it, you ended up with unworthy champions. “Among which all people purporting to know something about this line of sport will agree that [Karel] Kaers, [Éloi] Meulenberg, [Hans] Knecht and
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[Theo] Middelkamp never deserved to be crowned road champions.”
Breyer, who preferred time trials as a measure of a rider’s true worth, argued that a Worlds course must be hilly so a rider could not receive any outside ‘help’.
Breyer was one of the most respected cycling journalists of his age, and a prolific official, so his comments would not have gone unnoticed.
Meanwhile, doping was in the news. A Dr C R Woodard was an early crusader as he tried to convince others in the sport that there was a problem. Having gone to the track Worlds in Paris, he then wrote in Cycling: “I picked up half-adozen samples on the track. Proprietary preparations which could be acquired at any chemist with a prescription …. Two samples were unidentified tablets.”
Woodard’s motivation was prescient: “I believe drugs have been used in the past, but my main reason for investigating is the threat of the extent to which they can be used in the future.”
Introducing the theme, H H England wrote in his editorial, “Doping… is an evil thing. As evil to the user as to those he unfairly beats. The drug taker must go on using it and shorten his career, or his falsely won status will be revealed by his subsequent riding.”
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