The biggest bike race of the year is upon us and once again the issue of doping will be in the back of everyone’s minds
Cycling fans everywhere are licking their lips at the prospect of a three-week Tour de France shootout between the world’s top riders, but for those to whom the sport represents the worst of doping excesses, the question of whether we can trust what we see on the famous slopes of France remains.
The fall of Lance Armstrong made headlines around the world, made heroes and villains of its protagonists and fuelled hopes that cycling might finally be able to cleanse itself of a past littered with cheats, liars and the code of omerta.
But, three years on from the Usada report which made the extent of Armstrong’s duplicity public, it’s hard to assess to what degree those hopes have been fulfilled, with those on either side of the argument able to find a certain amount of evidence to support their views.
On the plus side, the combination of increased testing and fewer positive findings would suggest that implementation of a more independent testing programme and the World Anti-Doping Agency’s biological passport has led to progress being made.
However, other cases point to the likely reality that doping remains an amorphous problem that continues to elude the authorities. A recent BBC Panorama documentary exposed flaws in the biological passport while the UCI-commissioned CIRC report, published earlier this year, contained claims that sizeable chunks of the peloton were still engaged in illicit performance enhancement.
SportsJOE spoke to British cycling journalist Daniel Friebe and you can count him among those who are circumspect about the degree to which the efforts of Wada and the UCI have obstructed those wanting to dope.
‘I don’t actually think there’s been any further progress for the last three or four years,’ Friebe says. ‘I certainly don’t think the Armstrong Usada case has any impact on now at all. In fact, there have been some fairly negative signals regarding the effectiveness of the biological passport and its legal robustness. The Kreuziger case was a fairly major blow to the biological passport and its value as a deterrent.’
Saxo-Tinkoff rider Roman Kreuziger missed last year’s Tour after he was provisionally suspended when anomalies were found with his biological passport. The Czech maintained his innocence and is free to  ride this year’s Tour in support of Alberto Contador after Wada and the UCI dropped an appeal against a decision to clear him earlier this month.
Whether the clearing of Kreuziger is a failure of the UCI or not, it has shaken some of the faith in its president, Brian Cookson, who dethroned Irishman Pat McQuaid in 2013 on a platform of increased transparency and accountability, and Friebe is among those wondering if he has fully lived up to those pledges.
He said: ‘The big concern about Brian Cookson has been the accountability – he has been very keen to delegate everything out – the question is whether that has come at the expense of some of the UCI’s accountability. He stresses the fact that he has very little to do with anti-doping, which now completely independent within UCI and that his hands are tied.
‘The drive for independence is good on some levels, but in terms of the effect that has had on the field – has the doping population been reduced, has the margin for doping been reduced? I’m not convinced about that and neither are many people in the sport.’
Many feel the UCI missed another chance to send a strong message when they permitted the Kazakh-owned Astana team of reigning Tour de France champion Vincenzo Nibali to retain its ProTour licence, despite a series of failed tests over the past number of years. The team then drew even more attention to themselves with a dominant performance at the Giro which prompted further raised eyebrows.
But here Friebe has sympathy with both the UCI and Astana. ‘That was the UCI’s Licence Committee,’ he says. ‘It wasn’t necessarily to do with Cookson personally, and whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing remains to be seen, but I think people are a little bit unfair to the UCI when it comes to Astana.
‘A lot of the allegations relate to 2011 or 2012 and it annoys me slightly when people refer to these five positive tests at Astana last year, there weren’t five positive tests, there were three at their Continental team and two at Astana and they are very different entities and a lot of people seem determined to ignore that. Whether a team that has even had two positive tests should retain its licence is a separate discussion.
‘Astana look incredibly strong, but it would be like comparing them to Manchester City or Chelsea in the Premier League. Of course they are strong because they have the biggest budgets and the best players and the same applies to Astana. They’ve been given a yellow card and a stern talking to by the referee, so they’d be the last ones you’d expect to be diving into two-footed tackles.
‘People are talking as if they have gone for the jugular with regard to doping, but surely they’d be ill-advised to do that as they are under special observation. You can always find a logic to point in either direction, but I think you just have to wait and see.’
One area where the UCI does appear to be making an impact is in dealing with the threat of motorised bikes, and yes, that is really a thing.
The issue was catapulted back into the spotlight during last month’s Giro d’Italia, when race winner Alberto Contador changed his bike ahead of a climb and sparked rampant, unfounded speculation. And despite how ridiculous it sounds, Friebe believes a small number of riders have indeed gotten away with concealing battery-powered motors in their bicycles.
‘I don’t think it would be impossible to get away with,’ he says. ‘People have speculated about battery-powered motors for a few years now. It bubbled up again at the Giro when Contador changed his bike, something he’s done regularly in mountain stages over the years, but for some reason, at the Giro people noticed and it led to renewed speculation.
‘You would think that would be taking it to another level and really be beyond the pale, and the majority of riders would find it hard to square it with their own ego in the same way they do when they are doping and maintain it is still their own muscles and their own bodies pedalling the bike.
‘But I think it’s probably been done by a small number of riders in the past and that UCI have been told about this. They seem to be taking this very seriously and have alluded to it on numerous occasions and that has led people to believe that it has happened at some point in the past.
‘I don’t think, with the amount of coverage of the issue, if someone has done it in the past they are not going to do it again, there is too much buzz and the humiliation would be too great.’
Whether it’s doping or battery-powered bikes, one positive trend is the increased willingness of some within the peloton to speak out more vociferously against the spectre of cheating, indicating that, at the very least, the omerta that existed in the days of Armstrong appears to be broken. However, as encouraging as that is, care must be taken not to throw wild accusations around.
‘Idle speculation or outrage on social media can be dangerous,’ says Friebe. ‘Those grievances should be taken straight to the UCI or Wada. Everyone has a responsibility to have faith in the people that have been appointed to fulfil that task to come up with a definitive answer in time. It’s encouraging that people feel able to air those opinions, but ultimately it doesn’t take us anywhere in the war on doping.
‘The only thing that does is proper investigative powers. Unfortunately Wada is still severely underfunded and that thing that people say about Wada always being one step behind the cheats is still very much valid. Perhaps it did catch up about two or three years ago and was getting very close to where the doping bar was set at that time, but I get the sense that since then the cheats are perhaps starting to get ahead again, that’s my personal hunch.’
For fans of cycling, and the Tour de France in particular, the uncertainty remains, but that uncertainty and the ongoing battle against the dopers shouldn’t detract from the spectacle that is sure to unfold over the coming weeks.
We’ll have more from Daniel Friebe previewing this year’s Tour later in the week, but in the meantime you can follow him on Twitter @friebos
