ALAN FARRELL is 34; a runner, a cyclist, a lover of sports. Nine months ago he left a GP practice in Dublin to become a full-time doctor with Team Sky. The day after Bradley Wiggins won the Tour de France, Farrell proposed to his girlfriend, Rhona, in Paris. Just felt the right time. Now head of Sky’s medical team, he has asked if I want to see the riders do their blood tests.

It is eight o’clock in the morning and four riders stand around the team’s medical room at the Vanity Hotel Golf in Majorca while a medic draws the blood. Outstretched right arm, needle pierces skin, finds vein, and when the plunger is drawn back the syringe fills with blood. The process takes