Benjo Maso, the Dutch sociologist and historian of cycling, enlightened and depressed me about the prehistory of drug use. In the early days, this meant mainly strychnine, cocaine, and morphine,* though there were also folksier pick-me-ups, like bull's blood and the crushed testicles of wild animals. An Englishman named Linton died from his exertions in the Bordeaux-Paris race of 1896; his death was generally attributed to the use of morphine. In the 1920s, riders fuelled themselves with “incredible amounts of booze.” Maso cited another Bordeaux-Paris race (the event called for herculean stamina, being run in a single stretch, right through the night) in which one team's allowance per man was a bottle of eau-de-vie, some port, some white wine, and some champagne. These alcoholic habits continued; there are photos of Tour de France riders refuelling in bars and cafés. At Bédoin, where the Ventoux climb begins, Simpson supposedly complicated his body by stopping off with other riders for a drink; rumour has served him with a whisky and a pastis. This may sound foolishly self-defeating now, but at the time Tour regulations permitted the riders' support staff to give them liquid only at certain intervals; moreover, there was a general belief in the peloton (the main bunch of riders) that alcohol taken during the course of an event did you no harm, since it was quickly sweated out. Athletes and alcohol: when Captain Webb swam the English Channel in 1875, he washed his breakfast down that day with claret, and sustained himself on the way to Calais with brandy and “strong old ale.” So has it always been going on, I asked Maso. “Well, they had breath tests for alcohol in the ancient Olympic games,” he replied.
This all seems less shocking when you look at the terrain and remember that the riders have to cover 3,630 kilometres in three weeks, with only two rest days. The Tour de France is easily the most punishing endurance event in the athletic world. A triathlon, by comparison, is a fun-run. (Armstrong was a triathlete before becoming a professional cyclist.) The British rider David Millar, a Tour débutant this year, summed up a day that for him had consisted of eight and a half hours in the saddle, followed by a two-hour traffic jam to get to a hotel where the restaurant had closed and he was unable even to get a massage: “Sado-masochism.” If driving down the Ventoux to Bédoin leaves you croaking for a whisky, you'd certainly need one if asked to cycle up it; even the Rudge Whitworth Keep Fit Girl might take a snifter. The nearest equivalent to her on the Tour de France was perhaps Gino Bartali, Coppi's great rival, who won the race twice, in 1938 and 1948. “I didn't need drugs,” he once said. “Faith in the Madonna kept me from feeling fatigue and pain.” But such Petrarchianism was rare; for many riders miracles existed only in capsule form. With amphetamines, there was even a certain rough justice: they helped get you up the mountain one day, but exacted their price the next. Both Coppi and Simpson were known for their défaillances, their days of weakness; though doubtless climbing Ventoux without chemical help would leave you pretty tired the next day anyway.*
Such speedy, boozy days now seem almost innocent; and they were innocent in that Coppi's use of la bomba didn't contravene the cycling regulations of the day—amphetamines were declared illegal only in the mid-Sixties. The quantum leap came when drugs designed to stimulate were replaced—or, in real terms, joined— by drugs designed to fortify, notably growth hormones and EPO (erythropoietin). Instead of helping suppress pain and giving you the illusion that you were stronger than you actually were, the new drugs really did make you stronger. In addition, Maso explained, “There are no bad days, as with amphetamines.” From the early Nineties, EPO became the drug of choice among many professional cyclists. Its function is to raise the red-blood-cell count, which sends more oxygen to the tissues, thus increasing your endurance and powers of recovery. If there are two riders of equal ability, the one taking EPO will always beat the one who remains clean; it really is as simple as that. And until this year, the presence of EPO was not detectable; only its suspicious consequences were.
There is a down-side, of course. Bike riders, like other top athletes, are so fit that their heart rate is preternaturally low; EPO thickens the blood, making it harder to pump around the body, and also more liable to clot. In the early days of EPO there were a number of mysterious deaths—usually from a heart attack, usually in the middle of the night—of otherwise healthy cyclists. The assumption was that their heart rate had dropped during sleep and had become simply insufficient to pump the blood. To counter this, some EPO-takers got up in the middle of the night and did exercises. Some even used a kind of thoracic alarm clock, which woke them when their heart rate fell too low.
If you want to put a date on the final loss of innocence (ours, not that of the inner cycling world), you could do worse than suggest 8 July 1998—a century on from Linton's morphine-fuelled win in Bordeaux-Paris. Willy Voet, soigneur to the Festina team, was stopped by customs officers at the Franco-Belgian border. Soigneur means healer, and the job traditionally consists of giving massages and overseeing the day-to-day fitness of the riders. Voet was on his way to join the start of that year's Tour and was found to be transporting, in two refrigerated bags, “234 doses of EPO, 80 phials of growth hormones, 160 capsules of testosterone, and 60 capsules of Asaflow, an aspirin-based product which fluidifies the blood.” During a subsequent three-year ban, Voet published a memoir in which he set out dispassionately, and with rather unconvincing remorse, the drugs he administered: amphetamines, corti-coids, growth hormones (clenbuterol, creatine, nandrolone), and of course EPO. Voet explains that each drug has a specific function for the different parts of a stage race: thus, sprinters would take Trinitrine five or six kilometres before the finish to help them launch their final attack. La bomba has given way to le pot Belge (Belgian mixture), whose typical contents might be amphetamines, antalgics, caffeine, cocaine, heroin, and sometimes corticoids. This is a world in which the phrase “caffeine injection” refers not to a double espresso but to something with a needle on the end which helps you get through a time trial in the mountains. The soigneur is constantly tinkering and adjusting, in full collusion with his charge. (Here the notion that riders are sometimes slipped wicked substances without their knowledge is thoroughly mocked.) Voet describes Richard Virenque, the highly popular French leader of the Festina team, fretting about his preparation for a time-trial stage during the 1997 Tour de France. But Voet knew that everything was under control: “Given his regular treatments of EPO and especially growth hormones, he was as ready as he would ever be. All he needed was a well-timed injection of caffeine, plus Solu-camphre (to open his bronchial tubes).”
In this world, the dunces and losers are those who pit their cleaner physiques against the smarter cheats. Voet cites the case of Charly Mottet, a top French rider of the Eighties and Nineties. When he joined the RMO team, they discovered to their amazement that “the bloke was clean.” Mottet had, in many people's view, the talent to win the Tour, but Voet recognized that he lacked “the wherewithal to make it happen.” In other words, he refused the tempting pharmacopoeia. Mottet was known for his weakness over the final third of the Tour, and the soigneur's conclusion is as sad as it is hypocritical: “Yes indeed, Charly never had the career that he deserved.”
Voet's disclosures after his arrest led to a police raid on the Festina team, and its ejection from the Tour in mid-race. Six other teams quit in protest—though their departures were open to alternative explanation. One by one, Festina riders admitted illegal drug use, though Virenque adamantly protested his innocence from the start. The only note of unintentional comedy that year came during a judicial hearing in Lille, when the judge put it to him that, “You must have known what was going on because you were the leader.” Virenque, in a panicky mishearing, replied, “Me a dealer? No, I am not a dealer.” (The same two English words are used in French.) Whereupon Virenque's lawyer interjected, “No, Richard, the judge said leader. It's not an offence to be a leader.”
Voet explains the mechanics and use of EPO. The soigneur takes a blood sample from a rider, puts it in a portable centrifuge, and
obtains a reading of the haematocrit, or red-blood cell, level in percentage terms. An average man might have a level of 44 per cent, which would fluctuate with exertion, dehydration, blood loss, altitude, and other conditions. The soigneur would therefore monitor his charges in the run-up to a big race and administer EPO if the blood needed boosting; he would also adjust accordingly throughout the event. In 1997, the International Cycling Union fixed the legal limit at 50 per cent. But since soigneurs would examine their riders' blood daily, only foolish overenthusiasm or bad calibration would make you fail an official test.
In racing terms, EPO led to what was christened “the two-speed peloton”—those using it and those not. It also produced a blurring of the traditional distinction between endurance men and climbers. All of a sudden, riders of quite chunky body profile were motoring up hills previously the preserve of the quail-bodied climber. Recent Tour history cannot be rewritten, but needs to be annotated with Voet's casual asides—for instance, that such-and-such a rider, famous for such-and-such an exploit, was known in the peloton as Mr. 60 Per Cent.
The 2000 Tour was largely decided on the Pyrenean climb to Hautacam, on Monday, 10 July. After five hours of cycling, 191 kilometres, and two high mountain passes, Lance Armstrong, the 1999 winner, climbed the final fourteen kilometres at such a pace as to put all his main rivals at least four minutes behind him in the overall classification. Virenque was one of those overtaken in Armstrong's exhilarating attack: “He came upon us like an aeroplane.” During that previous year's win, Armstrong had faced some scepticism from the French press. How could a promising, aggressive, but often unthinking rider, after receiving treatment for testicular cancer, which had already metastasized into the lungs and brain, return and not only ride the Tour but actually win it? Renewed determination, a body outline refashioned by chemotherapy, a greater acceptance of suffering, and a wiser tactical approach—these were not sufficient answers for some. Perhaps the cancer drugs had inadvertently beneficial side effects? Ironically, Armstrong's doctors had at one point given him EPO (which, as the synthetic version of a naturally occurring hormone, is often prescribed for dialysis and chemotherapy patients).
Armstrong spent much of 1999 reiterating “I'm clean” at press conferences, and felt that journalists deliberately misconstrued him when he spoke French. His revenge in 2000 was to speak only English and let the French press get on with it. He is a lean, prickly, single-minded character, whose stance before the microphone implies that tact is for girls; he is after victory, not popularity. This approach did little to wash away doubt. Daniel Baal, the president of the French Cycling Federation, said after Hautacam, “I would love to know what is happening today … I do not know if we must speak of a new method [of doping] or of a new substance. The controls have had some impact, I saw many riders in difficulty on the climbs and that was good. But then must I have enthusiasm for how the race is being won?” Baal's problem was simply this: to know what he had seen.
Despite what might appear to outsiders a vast moral taint, the Tour remains extremely popular in France. This is the more surprising given that the last French victory, by Bernard Hinault, came fifteen years ago. Since then the race has been won by two Americans, two Spaniards, an Irishman, a Dane, a German, and an Italian. In 1999, not a single stage was won by a Frenchman; in 2000, they managed just two out of twenty-one. Such robust zeal for the victories of others confirms the suspicion that the French sports fan tends to be as much a devotee of the sport itself as of the team or nation, to be more of a purist than his Anglo-Saxon equivalent.
This is probably non-demonstrable, but here is my own evidence. In 1993 the French soccer team was on course for the finals of the next year's World Cup. All it required was one point—a mere draw—out of its final two qualifying matches, against Israel and Bulgaria. Astonishingly, the team lost to Israel. I watched the deciding game against Bulgaria on television in a French provincial hotel in the company of two off-duty waiters. At first, all went well: France took the lead. Then Bulgaria equalized—still, all was well enough, for time was running out. At the death, against the run of play and most versions of justice, Bulgaria scored a winning goal. In Britain, this might have led to domestic violence, or the torching of any nearby Bulgarian car or restaurant, if one could be found. There, one deeply despondent French waiter said to another, “It was a pretty goal.”
Purist does not, however, mean moralist. Footage of French police thundering into cyclists' hotel rooms in mid-Tour may delight editorialists but it offends many domestic cycling fans. The name of Richard Virenque was painted on the tarmac of the Ven-toux climb as often this year as any other. There is an instinctive French anti-authoritarianism that causes many to side unflinchingly with their heroes against the judiciary, the gendarmerie, and suddenly outraged politicians. But cycling is also different in one key respect. In other sports, fans go to a stadium, where there are entrance fees, tacky souvenirs, overpriced food, a general marshalling and corralling, and a professional exploitation of the fan's emotions. With the Tour de France, the heroes come to you, to your village, your town, or arrange a rendezvous on the slopes of some spectacular mountain. The Tour is free, you choose where you watch it from, bring your own picnic, and the marketing hard sell consists of little more than a van offering official Tour T-shirts at sixty francs a throw just before the race arrives. Then you get to see your heroes' grimacing faces from merely a few feet away; every seat is a ringside seat. These aspects make the Tour unique, and still rightly cherished by the French.
Some play it as a. jour de fête, part of a communal thrill in small village or country byway; the more hard-core will spend a couple of buffeted nights on the Ventoux in an ad-hoc trailer park, suffering the wind and cold in fellow-feeling with the riders; the fan who wants to know what is actually happening will follow the live TV feed from helicopter and motorbike cameras. The satellite dishes clamped to many of the camper vans indicate that methods two and three are often combined, but most go for one and three. So on 13 July—by which time the wind had dropped, and the temperature at the top of Mont Ventoux had risen to a generous six degrees centigrade—I headed for Saint-Didier, a small village east of Car-pentras. The main bunch would reach here after half an hour's riding, at some time between 12:27, if they were averaging thirty-eight kph, and 12:39, if they were dawdling along at thirty-four kph. Their route, down a plane-lined alley towards a handsome 1756 belfry gate, was marked out by chunky red-and-white barriers. The kerbside tables at the Bar du Siècle had been bagged early; outside Coiffure Salon Martine the eponymous hairdresser and her friends sat in white plastic chairs sipping white wine; there was minimalist bunting in the trees and a peloton of tots with tricolores painted on their cheeks being inducted into the mystery of the Tour. A couple of policemen were genially ignored as they tried to stop the crowd edging into the road.
First comes the publicity caravan and the team cars, bikes mounted on their roofs, spare wheels rotating idly; then a ten-minute warning of the race's arrival, and the approaching clatter of the TV helicopter. Then, at 12:35—indicating a slowish tempo— it goes like this: two riders suddenly appear round the bend and are past, whoosh, before you can turn your head—thirty seconds— three main groups—whoosh whoosh whoosh—three small groups— a few dropped riders—the very last one a member of the Cofidis team, because by now your eyes have adjusted—you also note he has ginger hair—then whoosh he is gone—and a swift two minutes are concluded with the blaring horns of the final race cars. I had expected it to go quickly, but in trying to take in everything I had seen virtually nothing. I hadn't recognized a single rider, because I hadn't specifically looked out for Armstrong or Virenque or Marco Pantani, the 1998 winner. They were in amongst the lean and gaudy figures going faster than I was prepared for. Only when they clustered in groups did I recognize team colours: the pink of Telekom, the blue-and-white of Banesto, and the Spanish-omelette colours of Mapei. Still, I had at least seen almost nothing from just a few feet awa
y, and in a spirit of benign fellow-feeling. That was the point of the jour de fête. Then I drove off to find a television while Coiffure Salon Martine reopened and the Bar du Siècle clattered on with more drinks.*
Two and a half hours later, after making a long loop without ever losing sight of the Ventoux, the race reached Bédoin, where Simpson had his last drink. The remnants of an early escape were chased down; Armstrong sent his U.S. Postal Teammates Tyler Hamilton and Kevin Livingston to the front, a discouraging pace was set, and what the French call la grande lessive (the big wash— or, perhaps, the great rinse) began, as rider after rider was slowly dropped. With ten kilometres left, the cleansing had reduced the leading group to six (Armstrong, the second-placed Jan Ullrich, and Virenque among them), with Pantani—the tiny, bald, ear-ringed Italian climber—hanging off the back. They passed Danish flags painted on the road, though the Danes had little to cheer this year; then another national enclave marked Belgium dynamite and blazoned with the name of the Belgian sprinter Tom Steels, who had dropped out earlier in the day and didn't get to read his own name; there were signs for Polti and Rabobank, Pantani and Virenque. The crowds gradually thickened as the mountain exerted its mute thrall.
The previous time Armstrong had ridden up Mont Ventoux, in the Dauphiné Libéré earlier in the year, he had cracked and lost over a minute to Tyler Hamilton. The experience had left him apprehensive. This time, however, he watched as others cracked. At Hautacam he had produced a great attacking ride; here, for most of the ascent, he showed how enthralling a great defensive ride can be. He stayed with his main rivals for the yellow jersey, keeping a steady pace, showing no weakness, and implicitly telling them: You want to win this thing? Then you'll have to attack me. And none of them was strong enough to do so—except an intermittently revitalized Pantani, who had started the day more than ten minutes behind Armstrong. The race leader allowed him to climb ahead, carried on monitoring Ullrich and Virenque, and then, with 3,000 metres to go, left his defensive posture and raced across to Pantani, taking a full half minute out of Ullrich and Virenque in the process. He passed the Simpson memorial without so much as a nod. Alongside Pantani, he kept telling him, “Plus vite! Plus vite!”and the two rode to the summit together, where in the last few feet Armstrong eased to give Pantani the day's victory. It was a geste de seigneur, French commentators agreed. To the rest of the field, Armstrong's ride up the Ventoux simply said: I'm the boss. They believed it; and apart from a bad afternoon on the Tour's final mountain five days later, he rode as boss to Paris and final victory.