Doping and Trust

The Tour de France

Course 1 · Chapter 6 · Doping and the Crisis of Trust

No account of the Tour is honest without its drugs history. Performance-enhancing substances were used in the race from its early years, became more powerful and more organised in the late 20th century, and led to the scandals that damaged its reputation around 1998 and again in the 2000s. This chapter reports the documented story: the early years, the Festina affair, the Armstrong case, the reforms and the continuing argument about trust. It deals with institutions and documented findings, and does not make claims about individuals beyond the public record. Names, dates and figures are from general knowledge and flagged "check".

Before 1998

The early years

In 1924 the Pélissier brothers told the journalist Albert Londres about the pills and lotions they took to ease the pain of the race (Chapter 3). In the following decades riders used stimulants such as amphetamines and, later, steroids, often openly, and the rules were weak (check). In 1967 Tom Simpson died on Mont Ventoux with amphetamines in his system (Chapter 4).

First rules and tests

France passed its first anti-doping law in 1965, and tests began in the Tour in the later 1960s (check). Riders sometimes resisted, with strikes and protests against tests, and the sanctions were mild. Cases such as the disqualification of Michel Pollentier in 1978 for trying to cheat a urine test became part of the sport's lore (check).

The EPO era

From the early 1990s the hormone erythropoietin (EPO), which raises the blood's oxygen-carrying capacity, was widely used, and there was no test for it until about 2000 (check). The cycling authorities introduced a limit on red blood cell concentration in 1997 as a health measure, an indirect control (check). Speeds in the mountains rose, which later investigations connected to the practice.

The Festina Affair, 1998

What happened (check all the details) A few days before the start, a team masseur (soigneur) of the Festina team was stopped by customs officers at the French-Belgian border with a car full of doping products, among them EPO (check). Police inquiries followed. During the race the Festina team was expelled, police raided hotels and questioned riders, other teams were investigated, and the riders staged protests and sit-down strikes in a revolt against the way they were being treated. Many teams left the race and only a fraction of the starters finished. The winner was Marco Pantani (check). The affair led to criminal trials in France, in which some Festina staff and riders admitted using banned products (check).

The significance. It showed that drug use was organised and systematic, not the choice of a few individuals, and that the sport's institutions had known and tolerated it.
The reaction. Sponsors, broadcasters and the public lost faith. The French government passed new laws on doping and sport (check).
The 1999 "Tour of Renewal". The organisers promised a clean race the next year. The winner, Lance Armstrong, would later be stripped of that title and six more (below).

The Armstrong Case

Step (check each)	Note
1999 to 2005	Armstrong, an American who had recovered from cancer, won seven Tours in a row.
Allegations	Journalists, former team-mates and others alleged drug use over years, and Armstrong denied it and sued some who said so.
2012	The United States Anti-Doping Agency published a lengthy report with testimony from many riders, concluding that he had led a sophisticated doping programme; the cycling authority accepted the findings and removed his results from 1998 onward, including all seven Tour wins (check).
2013	Armstrong admitted in a television interview that he had used banned drugs (check).
The record	The Tour's official list of winners shows no winner for those seven years (check).

Other Cases

2006. On the eve of the Tour, Spanish police inquiries (Operación Puerto) led to the exclusion of several favourites. The apparent winner, Floyd Landis, tested positive after a stage, and was stripped of his title (check).
2007. A leader was withdrawn by his team after a doping finding, and a stage winner was expelled; the German public broadcasters stopped live coverage of the Tour for several years (check).
2010. The 2010 winner, Alberto Contador, tested positive for a banned substance, and was stripped of the title after a long legal process (check).
The pattern. Each case produced a change in the rules or the testing, but also showed that the system had holes.

Reforms

Reform (check each)	Note
WADA	The World Anti-Doping Agency was founded in 1999 after the Festina affair, with a common code for sport from 2003.
EPO test	An urine test for EPO was used from about 2000.
Biological passport	Introduced around 2008: a record of each rider's blood values over time, so abnormal changes can be detected without a test for a specific drug.
Independent testing	Testing was moved away from the cycling authority to an independent foundation (check).
Team and sponsor rules	Teams and sponsors adopted anti-doping codes, and some teams hired their own medical monitoring (check).

Is It Clean Now?

That question cannot be settled by a single fact. Supporters of the present system point to the passport, to out-of-competition tests and to a changed culture among young riders, and note that the winning speeds of recent years are not out of line with improvements in training and equipment (check). Sceptics point to the many years in which the system failed, the limits of testing and the claims of a few former riders that doping is not over (check). In the UK a parliamentary committee reported in 2018 on the use of permitted medical exemptions by the Team Sky squad, finding that the team had "crossed an ethical line" in its use of medicines, though no breach of rules was established by the anti-doping authority (check; the team and the riders involved rejected the criticism). A careful reader keeps the questions apart: what the rules were, what was done and what can be proved.

A British comparison Doping has marked British sport too: athletics, rugby league and football have all had cases and inquiries, and the question of how far "legal but unethical" medical practices go has been argued about in the Team Sky affair and in the 2016 leak of athletes' medical exemptions (check). The Tom Simpson memorial on Ventoux, visited by many British cyclists, is a reminder that this is a question of human cost, not only of rules.

Check the details This is a chapter where accuracy matters most. Statements about individuals should rest on public findings (court judgments, anti-doping tribunal decisions, official reports, the individuals' own admissions) and not on rumour. The details above are from general knowledge; verify each against the original documents, such as the USADA reasoned decision of 2012, the French court reports of 1998 and later, and the UK parliamentary report of 2018.

Exercises

Exercise 1

Explain why drug use persisted in the Tour for decades, using the incentives facing riders, teams, sponsors and the authorities.

→ Solution

Exercise 2

Rank these kinds of evidence by reliability for a claim that a named rider used banned drugs in a given year: a positive test, a confession, newspaper allegations, a rival's testimony, unusual performance. Say what each can and cannot prove.

→ Solution

Exercise 3

Evaluate the claim "the Tour is clean now": say what evidence would support it, what would count against it, and why a final answer is hard.

→ Solution

Quick Reference

Early: Londres's Forçats de la route (1924); Simpson's death (1967)
1998: the Festina affair, expulsions, strikes, trials
Armstrong: seven wins removed after the 2012 USADA report; 2013 admission
Reforms: WADA (1999), the EPO test (about 2000), the biological passport (about 2008)
Method: separate rules, actions and what can be proved