Campaign of the Year, David Walsh

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CYCLING DAMIEN MEYER/BEBETO MATTHEWS

Armstrong’s ex-teammate Tyler Hamilton says doping powered the Tour champion

DAVID WALSH CHIEF SPORTS WRITER

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hen the 1998 Tour de France ended in Paris on Sunday, August 2, the world body for cycling, the UCI, knew its sport was a drugriddled circus. But the UCI had a problem. For years it hadn’t properly responded to doping and when customs officers and police authorities targeted the ’98 Tour, they found drugs everywhere. The problem seemed beyond the UCI’s control. Almost everything that is admirable in sport was violated by the Tour de France of that era. Teams used banned drugs in an organised and systematic way and when they were caught with their hands in the pharmaceutical sack, the riders protested at what they saw as harassment. The man who won the ’98 Tour, Marco Pantani, would die from a cocaine overdose five and a half years after his costly victory. The UCI’s problem was how to tackle the mess and its principal difficulty was a philosophical one. It had to decide whose side it was on; the dopers or those who wanted to ride clean. The dilemma was complicated by the widespread abuse of the blood booster erythropoietin (EPO), which everyone knew about but for which there was no drug test. In an attempt to lessen the abuse of EPO and reduce the possibility of riders overdosing, the UCI had introduced a law in 1997 that said any rider with a haematocrit of 50 or more would be forced to take a short break from competition. Haematocrit is the percentage of red cells in the blood and as EPO produced red cells, it drove haematocrit upwards. For a professional male athlete, a normal haematocrit would be somewhere between 40 and 45. Under UCI’s new direction, up to 50 was acceptable. “That was like the UCI saying to the riders, ‘You can use EPO provided you don’t allow your haematocrit to go over 50’,” says Frankie Andreu, who rode the 1999 Tour on Lance Armstrong’s US Postal team. But it also put the UCI in a position to know which teams were doping and which were not, through pre-race screening. If one team’s riders all had haematocrits in the 49-50 range you could bet they were using EPO. Tyler Hamilton was another rider on the ’99 US Postal team and in his recently published memoir, The Secret Race, he writes about the haematocrit levels of the Postal riders before the ’99 Tour. “A day or so before the race Johan [Bruyneel, team director] informed us that according to the Tour’s medical tests, several of our haematocrits were dangerously close to surpassing the 50%: I don’t remember all the numbers, but they were all in the high forties. George [Hincapie] was 50.9 (back then you only got dinged if you went past 50; the threshold was later reduced to 50.0). None of us were over, but we were awfully close, and it didn’t look good in the eyes of the UCI.”

Wheels within wheels: Tyler Hamilton, inset, once rode on the US Postal team led by Lance Armstrong, left. Tyler’s new book describes a systematic programme of doping

Brought to book With the US Postal riders’ haematocrits on the limit, UCI doctors and officials would, at the very least, have seriously suspected US Postal of cheating. When Postal’s leader, Lance Armstrong, then went on to control the race, supported by a super-strong team, UCI officials would have needed to be blind not to link the team’s dominance to their high haematocrits.

But even with this evidence, the UCI chose to promote Armstrong as the new face of the sport, the cancer survivor riding to the rescue of a Tour fallen on hard times. When Armstrong tested positive for a corticosteroid in that 1999 Tour, the UCI accepted a backdated medical prescription signed off by the team doctor Luis Garcia del Moral. That was a critical moment and perhaps the most

notorious drug conspiracy in the history of sport was allowed to gather momentum. Hamilton’s book is a detailed and wholly convincing account of life in a corrupt team in a corrupt sport. Every member of UCI should be made to read every page and then they will better understand their failure to protect the careers of those who tried to ride clean. They failed their sport. According to

Hamilton, the key to Armstrong’s justification was that their rivals were also cheating. “Whatever you do, those other f****** are doing more.” Truly, this is the passion of the worst. Who cared that laws would be broken, that sporting values would be trampled on and innocents would have careers curtailed and their right to know how good they could have been taken away.

Scott Mercier rode for US Postal and in The Secret Race he describes how team doctor Pedro Celaya came to him with steroids, encouraging him with the promise that the drugs would make him “strong like never before”. Mercier thought about it for a long time. “A tough decision, and in the end I didn’t take the pills and I quit at the end of the year. My heart wasn’t in it. What made the dif-

ference for me is that I was already 28; I’d had a good career; I had some options for going forward in my life. “I went into business, have done pretty well. Even so, I’ve wrestled with that decision for 14 years. I don’t blame people who did it in the least — I get why they did it. I mean, look at Tyler, look at how well he did in that world! It’s been strange watching that from afar, won-

Britain’s road champions begin 800-mile lap of honour Lionel Birnie THE TOUR of Britain is likely to turn into an eight-day, 800-mile lap of honour for Bradley Wiggins and Mark Cavendish, with hundreds of thousands of spectators flocking to the roadside from Norfolk to Scotland and Wales to the West Country to catch a glimpse of British cycling’s heroes. Wiggins, inset, won the Tour de France in July and will race for the first time since winning the time trial at the Olympic Games when the Tour of Britain’s opening stage begins in Ipswich this morning. Cavendish, his Sky teammate, will ride in his world champion’s rainbow jersey for the last time before this year’s event in Holland on September 23. No home rider has won the professional Tour of Britain since it was revived in 2004. Last year, a Dutchman, Lars Boom, defeated Steve Cummings from the Wirral by 36sec. The most recent British winner was Robert Millar in 1989. Derby-born Max Sciandri, who later rode for Great Britain at the Atlanta

Olympics, won the 1992 Kellogg’s Tour but was representing Italy at the time. If a British rider does manage to ride into Guildford in the leader’s yellow jersey when the race concludes a week today, it is unlikely to be either Wiggins or Cavendish. Having peaked for the Tour de France and the Olympics, Wiggins has steadily eased down. He has already said he will not ride the time trial at the forthcoming world championship because he does not feel he has the form to do justice to his status as Olympic champion. Cavendish will be keen to add to his tally of four Tour of Britain stage wins — he took two on his debut in 2007 and another two last year — but Friday’s hilly stage six to Caerphilly in Wales, which goes over Caerphilly mountain twice in the closing miles, and the following day’s stage in Devon are likely to see the field splinter. Britain’s best hope for overall honours might be Devonian Jonathan Tiernan-Locke, who rides for the Endura team and looks ready

to step up next season, with a transfer to Sky on the cards. The 27-year-old was fifth in last year’s race and started this season in superb form, winning two tough stage races in the south of France. The Tour of Britain is often unpredictable. The teams are only six-strong, compared with nine in the Tour de France, so the bunch struggles to control breaks. And the spread of abilities is wide. Some of the top teams, such as Sky, Liquigas, Euskaltel, Garmin and Orica-GreenEdge, will field riders with Tour de France experience while for the smaller British teams such as Endura, Rapha Condor Sharp, Raleigh and Sigma Sport this is the pinnacle of their season. Tiernan-Locke hopes Sky and Garmin will keep the race together for their sprinters, Cavendish and the American Tyler Farrar, so that he remains in contention. “If we can get to the Welsh stage and I’m still there, maybe I can do something. I’m a lot more confident than last year and the race suits me perfectly. Having two climbs of Caerphilly mountain so close to the finish, I couldn’t ask for better.” He started his career in mountain

1 Ipswich to Norwich Today 124miles

TOUR OF BRITAIN

2 Nottingham to Knowsley Tomorrow 110m

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3 Jedburgh to Dumfries Tue, Sep 11 100m

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4 Carlisle to Blackpool Wed, Sep 12 97m

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5 Stoke-on-Trent Thu, Sep 13 91m

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6 7

1 8

6 Welshpool to Caerphilly Fri, Sep 14 118m 7 Barnstaple to Dartmouth Sat, Sep 15 106m 8 Reigate to Guildford Sun, Sep 16 92m

biking, then turned to the road and joined an amateur club in France. Having represented Britain at under-23 level at the 2004 world championship he was stricken by Epstein-Barr virus and gave up cycling. “I felt knackered and lethargic,” he said. “Instead of having a resting pulse in the mid-30s, it was in the 70s. I went from winning races to not being able to do a two-hour training ride without feeling I had no energy.” He got a job in a friend’s bike shop and was encouraged to race

again. “I did some local races and started winning, then I stepped up a level and kept on winning.” Dan Lloyd, who used to ride for Garmin and was 10th last year, will be in the colours of Sigma Sport. Having previewed the route for ITV, he rates it the toughest Tour of Britain yet. “Sometimes the breaks will happen when you least expect it. Last year it split on a long, open climb in the crosswinds and suddenly the race was down to 20 or 25 people.” o Tour of Britain, ITV4, 8pm today

dering what might have been if I’d made a different choice.” The Secret Race convinces you because of the precise recollections and clarity of the detail. From Hamilton’s memoir there is a reminder of the intellectual laziness in the argument that, “as they were all cheating, it was a level playing field”. Forget the Scott Merciers, the Andy Hampstens, the Christophe Bassons and other clean riders who had their careers shortened and think just of the nine riders on the 1999 US Postal team. Hamilton describes how Armstrong, Kevin Livingston and he were on a doping programme far more sophisticated, and more costly, than that provided for the other six riders. Even in a doping team, there was a hierarchy that conferred great advantage on the chosen ones. So much for a level playing field. Hamilton also offers new insight into the character of Armstrong and even for old students of this complex man, there are discoveries. He tells of a long training ride with Armstrong in the south of France that ended in an altercation between Armstrong and a motorist. “This car comes tearing up the hill behind us at top speed, nearly hitting us, and the driver yells something as he goes past. “I’m mad, so I yell back at him. But Lance doesn’t say anything. He just takes off, full speed, chasing the car. Lance knew the streets, so he took a short cut and managed to catch the guy at the top, near a red light. By the time I got there, Lance had pulled the guy out of his car and was pummelling him, and the guy was cowering and crying. I watched for a minute, not quite believing what I was seeing. Lance’s face was beet red; he was in full rage, letting the guy have it.” Pat McQuaid, the current president of UCI, says he’s read extracts from Hamilton’s book but feels the evidence is tainted: “When people time the arrival of books to meet certain situations, I question what their motivations are. Is it to make money?” This has been a standard UCI response to books detailing the extent of cycling’s doping culture. Far better if McQuaid read the entire book. More encouragingly, he now says there is no plan to challenge the decision to strip Armstrong of his seven Tour de France titles. The president will propose an amnesty for those riders who confess to past doping offences. As things stand there is only one rider in the US Postal team who would not qualify for the amnesty and that is the one with whom the UCI and its former president Hein Verbruggen and now McQuaid have had such a good relationship: Lance Armstrong. o The Secret Race: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour de France: Doping, Cover-ups and Winning at All Costs. By Tyler Hamilton and Daniel Coyle

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