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The Tour and Drugs
By David Cohen
Jul 2, 2004, 06:00
Last year, the centenary of the Tour de France was celebrated.It was in 1903 that the sporting newspaper L’Auto launched the Tour, principally to boost the paper’s circulation and help it outdo its competitor Le Velo.
Not much is being said this year about the Tour that followed the very successful inaugural in 1903.With good reason.
The Tour of 1904 was a scandal.Spectators attacked riders with sticks and stones.Gamblers got involved and tried to influence the outcome.And there was clear evidence that riders cheated.
In the early years of the Tour, riders rode at night and it was relatively easy to take shortcuts without anyone seeing.And in 1904, they did just that.They also grabbed lifts with cars and one of them actually took a train to shorten the distance in one stage.
So outrageous was the cheating that French cycling authorities disqualified the first four finishers, including the Tour’s 1903 winner Maurice Garin.
Henri Desgrange, organizer and principal publicist of the early Tour, was in despair after the 1904 event.He as much wrote the Tour’s obituary in L’Auto:
“The Tour has ended, and I fear very much that its second staging will have been its last.It has been killed by success, by the passions it has released, the injuries and filthy suspicions caused by the ignorant and the wicked.”
Of course, the Tour survived but the 1904 edition presaged the sort of controversy that dogs the Tour of 2004 even before it has begun.
Cheating, or suspicions of cheating, has been a part of the Tour almost from Day One.
And drugs, even if they weren’t part of the 1904 scandals, have been a long-running theme in the Tour and professional cycling in general.
In 1924, three riders, including the famed Pélissier brothers Henri and Francis, dropped out of the Tour while it was in progress.The ostensible reason was that Henri had discarded several jerseys during a race (he wore them to warm up).This was against the rules laid down by Desgrange.
Journalist Albert Londres, interviewed the Pélissier brothers.They said riding the Tour was like “a calvary.”Riders experienced diarrhoea and weight loss among other deprivations.To survive they took drugs, including chloroform, cocaine and pills described as “dynamite.”
Londres supplied his own label for the riders – “lesforçats de la route” – the convict labourers of the road.Or, more loosely, the chain gang.This theme was to be taken up, especially by France’s leftwing press, throughout much of the 1920’s and 30’s.
The Pélissier brothers’ testimony challenged the Desgrange’s “story line” about the Tour – that it was a contest that brought out “superhuman” performances in its competitors as the battled with brute nature in heat and cold, on treacherous mountain passes and so on.
They implied that to survive on the Tour, let alone win it, being “superhuman” wasn’t enough: some sort of assistance was required.
In the 1960’s the Tour’s drug problems became a public issue in France and the French government passed legislation in 1966 that made it a criminal offence to consume, prescribe or offer certain listed drugs, which artificially improved an athlete’s performance.
Ironically, the year after the legislation was passed, the Tour experienced a drug-related tragedy that haunts it still today.
This was the death of English rider Tom Simpson who collapsed and died riding up the always-challenging Mont Ventoux in extreme heat (one thermometer registered 55C).When rescuers reached him, his dying words were that he be put back on his bike.
An investigation into Simpson’s death indicated that he had been taking amphetamines and methamphetamines before he collapsed. The verdict was that these drugs might have prompted Simpson to ignore the limits of his natural endurance as he climbed Ventoux that day.
But even though Simpson’s death shocked the cycling world it did not stop riders from seeking an advantage by taking drugs – and of course avoiding detection.Witness the major drug scandal that hit the Tour in 1998 and that threatens this year’s event even before it starts.
Some riders in the past spoke out against the hypocrisy that surrounds the drug issue.In the 1960’s the peloton even conducted a go-slow demonstration against drug testing.
Both Jacques Anquetil, the first rider to win five Tours, and the great Italian Fausto Coppi, who won three, freely admitted to taking drugs.They said it was necessary to survive the rigours of the sport.
“You’d have to be an imbecile or a hypocrite to imagine that a professional cyclist who rides 235 days a year can hold himself together without stimulants,” Anquetil said.
Riders no longer say such things.But do some riders think them?
