Doping in cycling

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Doping , i.e. the use of forbidden methods and substances to improve performance, has been an evident problem in endurance sports such as cycling for decades. But it was not until the so-called Festina affair during the 1998 Tour de France that the doping problem in professional cycling really moved into the center of public interest. At the same time, the fight against doping has been significantly intensified both at the medical and police level since the late 1990s.

Information board for doping control during the Germany Tour 2005

Definition of doping

All attempts to define the term doping have failed due to formulation difficulties, as it is not possible to summarize the complex contents of the prohibited substances and methods of non- physiological performance enhancement. Because of these difficulties, doping is defined by a doping list with precisely listed and described active substances and procedures.

This list was drawn up by international sports associations and adopted by all national associations. It was also stipulated that a doping violation exists if one of the substances listed in the prohibited list is detected in the body of the athlete or he refuses a doping control . Every athlete who takes part in official competitions undertakes to comply with all doping regulations by participating in the national association.

Active ingredients

From the 1930s to the 1970s, amphetamines and other stimulants and stimulants (including caffeine ) were primarily used as doping agents in cycling . These have a euphoric effect, reduce the athlete's tiredness and enable almost complete exhaustion of the physical reserves. Since stimulants have to be taken shortly before the competition in order to have an effect, they could be detected relatively quickly in controls. Even so, amphetamines are still frequently found in doping tests to this day.

The anabolic steroids (so-called anabolic steroids ) for building muscle, which have been banned since the mid-1970s , were also used in cycling, but are mainly used in high-speed sports such as weightlifting and short-distance athletics . In contrast, corticoids and corticosteroids (e.g. cortisone ) were among the most widely used doping preparations in cycling from the 1970s onwards. Banned by the UCI in 1980, they could not be detected by urine tests until a few years ago. Corticoids reduce the perceived feeling of strain and accelerate regeneration, an increase in effectiveness occurs in connection with amphetamines and anabolic steroids.

Since the end of the 1980s, numerous new doping products have reached professional cycling, in addition to growth hormones , especially erythropoietin , which under the abbreviation EPO has now become synonymous with doping practice in cycling. The preparation EPO enables an increased oxygen concentration in the blood, which directly improves the endurance of the athlete. EPO is said to have been used almost everywhere in top-class cycling in the early 1990s. For a long time, evidence of EPO doping could only be obtained indirectly by measuring the hematocrit value . However, it is now possible to detect EPO by means of a urine test, although there are still residual doubts about the reliability of the measurement method. Effects similar to those caused by EPO doping can be achieved by blood doping , i.e. by injecting your own blood or someone else's blood with a higher oxygen absorption capacity shortly before the competition. In particular, autologous blood doping has so far hardly been detectable, unless such a laboratory is found, as happened in 2006 in Spain.

History of doping in cycling

Early days

Since the beginning of the first sporty cycling races in the second half of the 19th century, cyclists also used performance-enhancing substances. The extent to which this can be described as doping is doubtful, since the term doping is expressly based on the prohibition of active substances and methods. As long as no separate sports medicine catalog - i.e. a doping list - was created, performance-enhancing substances were not illegal, at least from a sports law perspective. A discussion began in the 1920s about the need to define doping, not least in view of the clearly harmful consequences of the often uncontrolled consumption of pharmaceuticals.

It was not until 1966 that the UCI , the world cycling association, included binding anti-doping regulations in its regulations. After the first three winners of the Fleche Wallone ( Michele Dancelli , Lucien Aimar and Rudi Altig ) had evaded the doping control in the same year, an unannounced doping control took place for the first time at the 1966 Tour de France . The racing drivers went on strike against these measures at the next stage. The dangers of doping in cycling were later made drastically clear by a death: During the 1967 Tour , Tom Simpson died while climbing Mont Ventoux under the influence of amphetamines and alcohol .

1970s and 1980s

Numerous statements from cyclists themselves as well as from outside doctors and journalists show that doping in cycling continued to be extremely widespread even after the introduction of controls from the mid-1960s. On the one hand, this is due to the long-term unsystematic and lax control system and, on the other hand, to the increasing criminal energy of athletes and coaches. They found ways and means to disguise the known doping substances or switched to new, undetectable products.

Despite this structural weakness in the fight against doping, racing drivers repeatedly tested positive in doping controls in the 1960s to 1980s, including Tour winners Eddy Merckx , Felice Gimondi , Lucien Aimar , Luis Ocaña Pernía , Bernard Thévenet , Joop Zoetemelk and Laurent Fignon , Pedro Delgado and the German drivers Rudi Altig and Dietrich Thurau . Numerous other top drivers made doping confessions during or after the end of their careers, including Fausto Coppi , Jacques Anquetil , Rik Van Steenbergen , Roger Pingeon , Freddy Maertens and Peter Winnen . Both the legal as well as the public convictions on the subject of doping were rather mild during this time: drivers who tested positive were mostly only disqualified from the current race. Public opinion accepted the problem of doping as a side effect. In this respect, even if doping offenses were discovered, the cyclists hardly had to expect sanctions, which may have reduced awareness of injustice as well as the fact that “the others” also doped.

A fundamental change in this situation of a public largely disinterested in the natural doping practice in cycling has been observed since the late 1980s. At the Tour de France 1988 , the leading Pedro Delgado was not disqualified despite a positive doping test, because the concealer he was found was on the IOC doping list , but not the UCI . However, unlike previous doping cases, the Delgado scandal overshadowed the entire race.

Since the 1990s

In the 1990s, new, enormously effective doping preparations for increasing endurance, such as EPO , were probably used almost everywhere in professional cycling, but could not initially be detected. It was not until the Festina scandal at the 1998 Tour de France that the subject of “doping in cycling” came back to the public. The investigations revealed that the Festina team had practiced doping across the board. This discovery made clear the ineffectiveness of the doping controls at the time: none of the Festina drivers had tested positive. Instead, the public prosecutor's office, who raided the team's hotels and carried out several arrests, proved effective.

In the following years, strict anti-doping laws were created in France and Italy , which not only made the trade in doping drugs but also their use for manipulation in top-class sport a prison sentence. In parallel to this police fight against doping, the UCI - not least under pressure from the newly founded anti-doping agency WADA  - passed tougher sanctions under sports law, which now provide for a two-year ban (instead of the previous six months) for doping cases. Finally, some medical successes - such as the detection of EPO via a urine sample - were achieved.

Despite these successes in the fight against doping, doping continues to be a structural problem in professional cycling. Evidence for this are new, prominent doping cases that only show the tip of the iceberg: Olympic champion Tyler Hamilton was convicted of blood doping in 2004 and Vuelta winner Roberto Heras was positive in 2005 tested for EPO. This also includes the affair over the seven-time tour winner Lance Armstrong .

In May 2006, after the arrest of Manolo Saiz , the sports director of Liberty Seguros and the doctor Eufemiano Fuentes, what was probably the biggest doping scandal in professional cycling to date was uncovered (see the main article on doping scandal Fuentes ).

The focus of the investigation of the so-called Operación Puerto is Fuentes, in whose apartment the Guardia Civil found hundreds of blood plasma reserves as well as EPO, growth hormones and anabolic steroids. The investigation report by the Spanish authorities contains a list of 58 cyclists and 140 athletes from other disciplines. The list of the 38 names of cyclists released so far includes numerous well-known riders, including Jan Ullrich , Ivan Basso , Roberto Heras , Tyler Hamilton and Joseba Beloki . Further evidence pointed to the involvement of the sports director of the T-Mobile team, Rudy Pevenage (see also the doping affair Team Telekom ). Jan Ullrich, Óscar Sevilla and Rudy Pevenage were suspended or dismissed (Pevenage) by the sponsor T-Mobile at the request of the team management.

Even Alberto Contador was on Fuentes' list, but he was allowed to drive since 2007 and won since the 2007 Tour de France , in 2009 and 2010 , the 2008 Giro d'Italia and the Vuelta a España in 2008 . However, the Tour de France victory in 2010 was revoked because of doping.

On July 27, 2006 it was announced that the Tour winner of the 2006 tour, Floyd Landis , had a testosterone / epitestosterone quotient three times above the limit value during the 17th stage in the A sample. The B sample was also positive. Landis, a former assistant to Lance Armstrong , who now rode as captain of the Swiss Phonak Cycling Team , claimed the values ​​were natural for him since he was given a thyroid supplement and had also had beer and whiskey the night before.

In the Beckmann television show on May 21, 2007, ex-professional cyclist Bert Dietz confessed to EPO doping in the 1990s. As a result, the ex-drivers Christian Henn , Rolf Aldag , Udo Bölts , the active driver Erik Zabel and two physicians from the University of Freiburg confessed to having carried out blood doping or to have supported it.

The Danish Tour de France winner from 1996 Bjarne Riis announced in a press conference on May 25, 2007 that he had been doping with EPO, cortisone and growth hormones for years; Although his victory came under the influence of the ingestion of prohibited substances, " doping is of no use without sporting ability ". The press said that his conversion from Saul to Paul was not appreciated everywhere. Bjarne Riis had fired Ivan Basso as team boss after it became known that he had doped.

In the Bild-am-Sonntag of May 27, 2007, the former telecom masseur Jef D'hont announced that he had once personally injected EPO into the 1997 Tour de France winner, Jan Ullrich, in France, distanced himself but on Belgian radio again from this statement. Ullrich does not comment on the allegations, which his lawyer Peter-Michael Diestel commented with the words that Ullrich was - unlike the others - the accused in a criminal case and therefore could not comment. Shortly afterwards it became known that Diestel is no longer a lawyer for Jan Ullrich, whereby Diestel claimed that he had resigned from his mandate, while Jan Ullrich's entourage reported that he had been dismissed.

In parallel to these affairs, the so-called Cofidis affair was investigated between 2003 and 2007 , in which a carer and six drivers were finally sentenced to probation for doping abuse.

To combat doping, the biological passport was included in the UCI regulations from January 1, 2009 . With its data collection, the biological passport enables measures based on the anti-doping regulations with the help of indirect verification procedures, i. H. without evidence of a specific substance or method.

Since 2013

In January 2013, Lance Armstrong admitted long-term doping on Oprah Winfrey's talk show under great pressure from the USADA . As a reaction, all seven Tour de France victories were withdrawn from him, without the respective victories being reassigned. Shortly thereafter, Michael Rasmussen , Michael Boogerd, and Rolf Sörensen admitted extensive doping abuse. In July 2013, a French investigation into the 1998 Tour de France came to the conclusion that many former riders such as Marco Pantani (winner), Jan Ullrich , Erik Zabel , Laurent Jalabert , Mario Cipollini , Abraham Olano , Jeroen Blijlevens , Jens Heppner , Stuart O ' Grady doped with EPO. Ullrich and Zabel admitted this independently of one another.

In a report published in March 2015 by a Cycling Independent Reform Commission appointed by the UCI, numerous violations by the UCI of the anti-doping regulations and of good governance principles during this period were pointed out.

Behavior of convicted athletes

Convicted doping sinners always find new attempts to explain their offense. Floyd Landis stated at the 2006 tour that a busy evening before was the reason for his victory in the difficult mountain stage. In many cases, the press not only reports absurd explanations, but also believes them. So z. B. Gilberto Simoni, who mentioned an anesthetic containing cocaine during a dental treatment and Peruvian sweets for two positive tests at the Giro d'Italia 2002 or Jan Ullrich, who spoke of having been given "any" pills by a stranger in a discotheque should improve his mental state. Also noticeable is the high number of alleged asthmatics and chronically ill cyclists among cyclists who allow certain preparations to be taken.

Those indirectly affected by a doping case, for example teammates, are generally loyal to their accused or convicted colleagues. Many drivers argue with the presumption of innocence or, if there is clear evidence (used syringes in the waste or labeled blood bags), it is pointed out that no test was positive. Almost no driver speaks of fraud.

On the other hand, a clearer picture emerges from the statements of former cyclists who take up this topic, for example because they were convicted themselves. Most of the time, they talk about comprehensive and systematic doping, either in their own team or even in the entire field of drivers. Examples of this are some statements in the case Festina, as of Alex Zülle or the revelations of David Millar , Jesús Manzano and Jörg Jaksche in the mirror the output 27/2007. Even the drivers of earlier decades such as Dietrich Thurau speak in retrospect of nationwide doping behavior. The revelations of May 2007 from Dietz to Aldag to Riis were noted with astonishment in many other countries, especially at the time of the cycling race, the Giro . According to Jörg Jaksche's testimony, some of the sporting directors wanted to wait until calm returned, and then let the accused drivers start again, only the German teams would prevent this.

Convicted and banned cyclists (selection)

  • June 1996: Jörg Paffrath ; Suspension for six months; Doping during the German Road Cycling Championships 1996.
  • April 1998: Jörg Paffrath ; After his admission of the use of doping drugs in the magazine Spiegel (25/1997) banned for life, lifelong ban lifted in May 2003 by the BDR.
  • Autumn 1998: Alex Zülle , Festina Team ; Suspension for seven months; Doping during the Tour de France 1997; Doping with EPO .
  • Autumn 1998: Laurent Dufaux , Team Festina; Suspension for seven months; Doping during the Tour de France 1997; Doping with EPO .
  • Autumn 1998: Armin Meier , Team Festina; Suspension for seven months; Doping during the Tour de France 1997; Doping with EPO.
  • Autumn 1998: Laurent Brochard , Team Festina; Suspension for five months; Doping during the Tour de France 1997; Doping with EPO.
  • Autumn 1998: Christophe Moreau , Team Festina; Suspension for five months; Doping during the Tour de France 1997; Doping with EPO.
  • Autumn 1998: Didier Rous , Team Festina; Suspension for five months; Doping during the Tour de France 1997; Doping with EPO.
  • Fall 1998: Neil Stephens , Team Festina; Resignation and end of career; Doping during the Tour de France 1997; Doping with EPO.
  • Autumn 1998: Richard Virusque , Team Festina; Ban for nine months (reduced to seven months); Doping during the 1997 Tour de France; Doping with EPO.
  • Autumn 1998: Pascal Hervé , Team Festina; Lock duration unknown; Doping during the Tour de France 1997; Doping with EPO.
  • July 21, 2007: Alexander Vinokurov , Team Astana ; Ban for 2 years; Foreign blood doping; Withdrawal of two stage wins.
  • September 20, 2007: Floyd Landis , Team Phonak ; Ban until January 30, 2009; Doping during the Tour de France 2006, stage 17; Doping with artificial testosterone ; Withdrawal of the 2006 Tour de France victory.
  • Fall 2008: Bernhard Kohl , Stefan Schumacher , Team Gerolsteiner, ban for 2 years; Doping during the Tour de France 2008 with the EPO successor preparation CERA.
  • January 2013: Lance Armstrong , withdrawal of all seven Tour de France victories
  • July 2013: 57 participants in the 1998 Tour de France, including Marco Pantani , Jan Ullrich , Erik Zabel , Laurent Jalabert and Stuart O'Grady

See also

literature

  • Willy Voet: Doped. The ex-Festina masseur unpacks. Or: How the tour gets going , Sportverlag Berlin, 1999, ISBN 3-328-00858-6
  • Philippe Gaumont: Prisonnier du dopage , Bernard Grasset publishing house, Paris, 2005, ISBN 2-246-68431-5
  • Meutgens et al .: Doping in cycling , Delius-Klasing Verlag, Bielefeld 2007, ISBN 978-3-7688-5245-6
  • Andreas Singler and Gerhard Treutlein: Doping - from analysis to prevention , Chapter 3. Meyer & Meyer, Aachen 2001, ISBN 3-89124-665-X
  • Jean-Pierre de Mondenard: Dictionnaire du dopage. Substances, procédés, conduites. dangers. , Masson, Paris 2004, ISBN 2-294-00714-X
  • Patrick Laure (coord.): Dopage et société. Ellipses. , Paris 2000, ISBN 2-7298-6952-2
  • Lars Nuschke (Ed.): Quo vadis cycling? The scandal sport between doping and sponsors , Sierke Verlag, Göttingen 2008, ISBN 978-3-86844-001-0 .

Movies

  • Uli Fritz, Hagen Boßdorf: The rolling pharmacy - cycling and its doping problem ARD, 2006, documentation

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hedwig Kröner, Jeff Jones: 38 pages of circumstantial evidence www.cyclingnews.com, July 2, 2006, [3. July 2006]
  2. ↑ List of suspicious professionals according to the Spanish news agency EFE. [3. July 2006]
  3. ^ Pevenage SMS corroborate suspicion against Ullrich. Der Spiegel, July 1, 2006
  4. ↑ t-mobile-team.de of June 30, 2006: Ullrich, Sevilla and Pevenage suspended ( Memento of July 17, 2006 in the Internet Archive )
  5. ↑ Riis should hand in the yellow jersey , May 26, 2007
  6. ↑ Sportbild, May 25, 2007
  7. ↑ rad-net.de: Biological passport is included in the regulations, accessed on June 16, 2008
  8. ↑ French Senate releases positive EPO cases from 1998 Tour de France ( Memento of the original from August 22, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Cycling News  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / m.cyclingnews.com
  9. ↑ https://www.welt.de/sport/article118355268/Radstars-Ullrich-und-Zabel-als-Luegner-ueberfuehre.html , Die Welt
  10. ↑ CIRC: "The fight against doping is far from over". radsport-news.com, March 9, 2015, accessed March 10, 2015 .
  11. ↑ The violations and misconduct of the UCI. radsport-news.com, March 9, 2015, accessed March 10, 2015 .
  12. ^ CIRC finds no proof of UCI corruption but questions linger over governance. rcycling-news.com, March 10, 2015, accessed on March 10, 2015 (English).
  13. ↑ Di Luca is also threatened with indictment , FAZ report of May 31, 2007, section "The aunt from Colombia" Doping investigations in Italy - Di Luca is also threatened with indictment
  14. ↑ main-rheiner.de of July 8, 2002: Tablets with major side effects ( Memento of March 21, 2005 in the Internet Archive )
  15. ↑ July 2, 2007 Re: doping . In: Der Spiegel . No. 27 , 2007 ( online ).
  16. ^ Like a dog on a chain Spiegel, June 16, 1997
  17. ^ BDR pardons Paffrath: Lifetime ban lifted www.radsport-news.com, May 2, 2003
  18. ↑ Spiegel.de - Mountain stage victory: Second blood doping finding against Vinokurow