The Gerva they shouted the man responsible for an interesting note in cycling statistics. The Italian Luca Paolini was part of the peloton for almost a decade and a half. He was a classics specialist, once third in the World Championships and twice a stage winner in Grand Tours. But above all it was: the last official doping case at the Tour de France.
In 2015, Paolini had to leave after a positive cocaine test. Seven years without a doping ban is an astounding figure given the doping-rich past of the France loop. And yet that says almost nothing about how clean the peloton is that is now racing back up to Alpe d’Huez or Hautacam.
Doubt is a constant companion in cycling, and this is not only due to the many scandals of the past. Cycling earns it almost every day. Just a small selection: The investigators stopped by the drivers and supervisors of the Equipe Bahrain several times shortly before the tour. In the case of the Ineos team, the trendsetter of the past decade, the circumstances of a mysterious testosterone delivery have not been clarified to this day. And all in all, there are still an unbelievable number of protagonists from the contaminated nineties and zero years active in the entourage of the peloton who have never really regretted or opened up: sports directors, team managers, doctors.
It has long been about the large gray area in which drivers take everything the pharmacy has to offer
When the public prosecutors uncovered a blood doping network involving a doctor from Erfurt three years ago, everyone was able to answer the question of how likely it is that only the few busted followers were part of such a circle or a similar one. Anyone who talks to anti-doping experts hears about their search for new magic bullets that are so difficult to prove. That’s a core finding of the dirty time anyway: negative doping tests don’t prove anything, the super doper Lance Armstrong had several hundred of them in his career. How clean a peloton is usually only becomes apparent years later.
But it doesn’t even need proof of banned substances to cast doubt on the cleanliness of the field. It has long been about the big gray area, in which some drivers take everything the pharmacy has to offer in order to somehow survive the ordeal of the tour. This is currently illustrated, for example, by the so-called ketones, which are said to allow the body to regenerate better. They’re not forbidden. But anti-doping experts advise against consumption because the health consequences are unclear, even the world cycling association recommends not taking them. But teams like Jumbo-Visma with their yellow wearer Jonas Vingegaard and some others defend the use of ketones because they are normal dietary supplements.
Just two protagonists, who were in very different roles at the peak of epo doping, have described this type of consumption very vividly these days. Perpetual imposter Armstrong remarked on his tour podcast on mentality in the peloton, “If I could gain 15 percent power, I’d drink gas.” And the former doping refuser Christophe Bassons, who was bullied by Armstrong and others from the peloton at the time, said in the SZ interview that the extensive medical support scared him almost more than doping. “If you have the choice between a small therapeutic dose of Epo or 20 to 30 pills a day to ride a Tour de France,” he said, “then think for a moment which of those is more dangerous.”
