Now and again people label me as being vociferously anti-doping, as though I live in a righteous world, where any athlete who dopes is damned to eternity. This is absolutely not the case. I understand why any cyclist dopes. I am pretty sure I would also dope if I was in their situation. The cycling landscape is, and always has been, akin to 100 drivers going at 100mph when the speed limit is 70mph. If you continue to abide by the speed limit you need to pull to the side and accept you’ll be the last car. In that situation why wouldn’t a driver go at 100mph? The risk of being caught is minute and the ‘reward’ for abiding by the rules is coming last. Doping isn’t the issue. The issue is the hypocrisy around doping, the attitudes towards those unlucky enough to be caught.

In 2006, not long after Floyd Landis tested positive for testosterone, the peloton was sought after for their responses. Some of these replies were beyond belief. Stuart O’Grady, who doped with EPO, said he wasn’t surprised Landis was doping due to the speed Landis passed him out on the road to Morzine. O’Grady was okay with the doping as long as Floyd didn’t pass him out? Christophe Moreau, who doped with Festina, also had a go at Landis and dismissed Floyd’s efforts are defending himself at arbitration. Christophe referred to Landis as scraping the bottom of the barrel in his legal defence efforts. Bert Grabsch, who doped whilst on the Phonak team of 2006, also publicly vilified Landis. The best one though was surely the Oscar Pereiro statement. Oscar came second to Landis and when notified of Landis’ positive test, he said he felt robbed of the yellow jersey. Interesting comments from a guy friends with Landis and who had told Floyd on the final Friday that he would be doing a blood bag prior to the Saturday Time Trial. Of course this is outside of the fact that Pereiro actually failed a test for salbutamol in the race. This positive test was leaked out six months after the Tour ending, in contrast to Landis’ positive urine sample when Pat McQuaid told the media within two days of the tour end, despite Landis himself not yet knowing. But it was all sorted out. The UCI were never going to risk a second yellow jersey positive from the same race so a post-dated TUE was accepted for Pereiro and he is still the 2006 Tour de France champion – according to the record books. Fans know the real winner of this race.

October 2010 Hans Seppelt finds out that Alberto Contador had tested positive for Clenbuterol at that year’s race. We are still unsure how Seppelt found this information out but what we do know is that the UCI had tried to cover it up. Again contrast this reaction from the UCI with the Landis positive test. End result, after a long drawn out process, Contador got a two year ban for a Clenbuterol positive. Of course the reactions from his fellow professionals was the usual pit of hypocrisy. St David of Millar (I will return to him later) spoke of Alberto being a ‘great guy’ (because only scumbags dope?) and believing that he was innocent – despite traces of the plastic from a blood bag (plasticiser test) also being found in the samples taken from Contador and despite Contador’s initials being found in Operation Puerto files alongside his teammates from Liberty Sigueros. St Jonathan of Vaughters did his usual obfuscation on this point by defending Contador and saying Anne Gripper had told him that ‘AC’ was Antonio Colom. Why Anne Gripper was in direct contact with a team boss is another serious issue. Vaughters was on a high wire balancing act at this stage, between marketing his team as being clean, and simultaneously making overtures to signing Contador. But that’s the parallel universe that Vaughters inhabits – Run with the hare, hunt with the hound. (A penny for the thoughts of Rasmussen by the way. Kicked out of the 2007 race whilst in the lead and with only three stages left. Contador ‘won’ the race in Rasmussen’s absence. The same Contador who later tested positive for clenbuterol. Rabobank were put under pressure to throw Rasmussen out of the race for PR purposes by Christian Prudhomme resulting in team bosses Erik Breukink and Theo De Rooij turned their backs on Rasmussen, despite knowing full well what Rasmussen had been doing to prepare for the race. This reminds me of that scene in Goodfellas when Henry asks Paulie for money towards the end – Paulie hands him a bundle of notes and says ‘now I am turning my back on you’. Similar happened to Landis with John Lelangue. John knew what Floyd had to do in order to prepare but still pretended Floyd had acted alone when Floyd was caught).

On a side note, the Contador Clenbuterol case, and his two year ban, raises interesting points when compared to the cases of Michael Rogers and Li Fuyu. Contador’s punishment was a two year ban with the first year of the ban being retroactive. Li Fuyu got a two year ban. Michael Rogers got nothing. Three cyclists. Three positive tests for the same product. Three different bans. The athletes should respect the anti doping authorities, why?

Any piece on hypocrisy in cycling could never be even half done unless we mention David Millar. A guy who is now seen as a paragon of virtue, a guy who doped, but found Jesus and is now preaching to the world. When Floyd Landis confessed everything in 2011, Millar said

“He’s reached the end of the road and I just find it disgusting,” said Millar from his home training base in Girona, Spain. “He’s a liar and a cheat and he has nothing left in cycling so he just wants to burn the house down.” After Landis’ ban four years ago, Millar said he tried calling him to give advice on how to return to the sport. He never received a return call. “If he had stood up and manned up four years ago, he’d be racing the Tour de France now,” Millar said. “He’d have a different book out. He’d have not lost a penny. He’d be admired by young people. He would have a different life ahead of him. He’d be in a decent mental state. He’d be sober.

Strong words from David. Even stronger when we remember that David himself ‘confessed’ only after 48 hours in a French police cell with Gendarmes for company. Millar was arrested in a restaurant in Biarritz where he was having dinner with Marginal Gains Guru Dave Brailsford. Small world. Maybe they were discussing hand washing techniques for police cells. Less well know is that Millar had actually initiated legal proceedings against Paul Kimmage in the spring of 2004 for an article Paul had wrote. Millar lost some legal strength whilst in the jail cell apparently. It’s beyond belief that Millar is lecturing any other rider about them confessing sooner when he himself admits he would never have confessed if he hadn’t been arrested. This is of course if you can count Millar’s ‘I only took EPO three times’ as a confession. To add to the absurdity of Millar’s words on Landis, he took part. as a consultant, in the diabolical movie based on Walsh’s pursuit of Lance starring Ben Foster. The remuneration for Millar, for only a few hours work, was allegedly towards 70,000 dollars. Millar conveniently ignored one thing when accepting the money. The movie would never have been made unless Floyd had confessed. Without Floyd there is no Fed case. But Maserati David Millar is put forward as a ‘warning’ sign to young professionals that they shouldn’t dope. ‘Don’t dope kids, because if you do, you too could build a profile based on the success garnered from taking EPO and end up a millionaire.’

A slightly amusing aspect to the Millar story involved Pat McQuaid. Pat slammed Tyler and Floyd as ‘scumbags’ and said they were only trying to sell books and profit from their stories. When it was put to Pat that Millar, who Pat often eulogised, had also written a book, Pat said it was different because Millar didn’t publicise the book as much as Tyler. So basically it’s okay to write a book, just don’t have any launch parties with wine.

Time and again Mr Kenacort Bradley Wiggins has shown himself to be a nasty person. This was exemplified in January 2011 when asked his thoughts on Lance and Landis. On Landis he said,

I think you have to question Landis’ credibility because he lied under oath before and the stories that you hear about him drinking and things like that and you know, [making] telephone calls to people I know, threatening them with things, you just think that the guy appears to not all be there. So when you see these kinds of claims in the press you have to question his credibility because it’s almost like it’s coming from a mad man, but at the same time maybe that’s all borne out of frustration and things. “You just never know but you just look at the way his life has gone over the last five years and you think there’s one person who it would have been so easy to have just admitted it when it happened in 2006, come clean if he did do it and he would have been back racing in a professional team making pretty good money. It’s quite sad how his life has gone away, just dwindled away and now there’s all these claims and counter claims and it’s quite a sad story for him.”

Wiggins, in the same interview, said the following on Lance,

I’ve always been a bit of a fan of Lance and have sided on the side of innocent until proven guilty with him. There isn’t an athlete or a cyclist out there that isn’t more tested than he is, certainly since his comeback, he’s probably been the most tested cyclist in the pro peloton and you take that on face value and that he’s never failed a drugs test and until he does he’s clean. That’s how I’ve always had as a stance on Lance.”

What makes the above comments even worse from Wiggins’ perspective is that we now know he was told by numerous people at Garmin, who were on the US Postal team with Lance, that Lance had doped and that Landis was telling the truth.

But why are some riders welcomed back after a doping ban (Millar, Contador, Valverde, Basso, Schleck, whilst others (Landis, Rasmussen, Jaksche and Tyler) clearly blacklisted by the UCI? Certainly there seems a pattern that, if you are caught you have to keep your mouth shut about doping issues, if you ever want to ride a bike at World Tour level again. Tell the truth and be blacklisted, play the game, say you acted alone and that the testing works, then you’ve some chance of getting back in. This does not explain Jorg, Tyler and Floyd mind. The final two were punished it seems for daring to take on the UCI legally. Rasmussen was punished for the embarrassment he had brought the UCI for exposing the farcical nature of the whereabouts system. Why Jorg was blacklisted I honestly do not know. One can speculate that he was a victim of a public relations operation, after Operation Puerto, a sacrificial lamb to show that they care about doping. This is one thing the UCI, UADA and WADA are brilliant at to be fair. Pick one big name per decade, ruin his or her life to keep up a pretence of caring, and campaign for more funding for buffets and hotel conferences on the back of this ‘success’. Meanwhile the other athletes, who have doped as well in many cases, run off with the spoils of their success laughing at the person unlucky enough to be caught. But it’s important they take a metaphorical shit on the unlucky athlete when he’s caught, just to keep up appearances of course. Life comes at you hard though as Bradley Wiggins is now finding out. Froome may yet regret saying dopers should get jail time. Andy Schleck surely regrets saying he swears ‘on the head of his mother that his brother Frank is clean’. Vaughters you’d imagine regrets saying doping simply isn’t tolerated anymore and isn’t what the cool kids do. But that’s presupposing these people have a conscience. Dopers are assholes, dopers are lovely people. Clean athletes are assholes, clean athletes are lovely people. Give me a lovely doper any day of the week, at least you won’t find hypocrisy there.