The only people I can name in this book as being users of Performance Enhancing Drugs (PEDs) are those who have both tested positive and had the decision confirmed by the authorities and any appeal rejected. If I come into my shared room and see a team-mate hooked up to a drip, as I have, I might have a very strong opinion that it is PEDs they are infusing, but if they state that it is just saline solution and they are ‘hydrating’, and the evidence is disposed of very quickly, it becomes just my word against theirs. I can’t manhandle them, complete with drip in arm, down to the local police station.
I shared this experience soon after it occurred with the relevant agency in the UK and was told very clearly that there was nothing they would do with the information. So from that point on, I made it very clear to my managers and team-mates that I would not tolerate any activity like that. Thereafter, I never had another problem like that again.
A good number of commentators were able to analyse my 2013 retirement statement and place some dots between the gaps and then draw conclusions. Where was I invited into the campervan and asked what ‘help’ I needed? Again, it can be quite easy when there is a situation like that of William Dazzani and his involvement at Deia-Pragma-Colnago. But that took the full weight of long-term phone taps and other instruments of state vigilance to bring evidence that led to his arrest. It involved multi-agency work over many months to take it that far in line with what Fany Lecourtois and directeur sportif Giorgio Zauli were able to tell me months before.
I had my dream . . . and that is what it was. Mum and Dad supported me but were always striking a note of caution – plenty could go wrong, just one element of which was finding a mountain that you could only get to the top of by using PEDs. The financial realities of the circuit were evident before I even joined it. I had my top A-level grades and could go to university. ‘I will participate in the sport of cycling on my terms’ is the attitude I took to dealing with all facets of what I found. While sitting at home on the sofa watching the Sydney road race, knowing I was the best British road racer but blocked by a bureaucracy of uninformed men and a rule that appeared every bit as conveniently as those that outlawed Graeme Obree, it was crystal clear before I even started my professional career that such an attitude would win me few friends. But I wasn’t about to trade in my moral code and principles. If it was ever going to happen for me, it was going to happen my way.
Did I really think I could do it clean? For a window into my mindset, I need to describe to you what I was exposed to. In the UK, as most everywhere else, this was a man’s sport. No GB girls really went about it properly, training day in day out during their youth. At the age of 13, I was able to make clean sweeps of all the BSCA titles because the other girls didn’t train like I did. The level up – British clubwoman – was populated either by late entrants to the sport or by those who continued the quasi social/sporting manner that I encountered in the girls I rode against. Above that were the WCPP women. They might be full-time athletes and be surrounded by all the trappings of being elite riders – but let’s go back to that first British Track Championships at Manchester. Femke, Claire, Danielle, Laura and I, along with all the others, put on a proper race. They knew they had to take me on, and now I had been given a showcase, I was not about to give it second best. We schoolgirls ran an identical format race, minutes faster than the senior women. In 1998 and 1999 at those track championships in Manchester, Dad and I watched very carefully. The British senior athletes held absolutely no fears for me. I had six years of dedicated training under my belt as my body formed.
Women’s cycling had made its debut at the Olympics in 1984. The circuit was on an upward trajectory, but only in the very recent past had it gone global. Therefore, I thought that the quality of competition would not be truly elite, as there had not been time for it to develop. The top 16 in every Wimbledon Championships have all been training seriously since a very young age. I was bringing that same history of youth development to the sport of cycling at what I hoped was exactly the right time.
Another opinion-forming event was that World Road Race Championship of 2000. Looking back in hindsight, the conclusions I made were wrong. In lap five of nine, Zinaida Stahurskaya broke away from a small bunch, then caught the break. She attacked and then rode the last few laps to the finish on her own. On the day, it appeared too good to be true. That only eight months later she tested positive and was banned for four months left a very clear concept in my mind about who I could trust. Zinaida was using PEDs, but the fact that the chasing group couldn’t catch her was testimony that drug abuse was not widespread.
In the summer of 2001, as I shelved plans to go to university and committed to trying out the full-time athlete role, there were other encouraging events. The Italian police raided Marco Pantani’s hotel room during the Giro, found syringes and other evidence, and he was removed from the race. Italy’s most famous and charismatic rider had been exposed as a common liar. Elsewhere, Dane Bo Hamburger was the first rider to test positive as a result of the brand new EPO test. Needless to say, he squealed that he had never taken anything, the bungling officials didn’t handle his B-sample correctly and he was free to run out the rest of his career as a ‘clean’ athlete. On his retirement, he struck a book deal and cashed in on his ‘tell all’, admitting he had been using EPO.
Others were caught with this new test. I went to Canada and you will recall Genevieve Jeanson rode away from the bunch and it took a committed chase by four of us, the next four best riders in the race, some 60km to pull her back. That day I didn’t doubt that Jeanson’s performance was anything other than false, but the fact that like Zinaida she was one, and the rest of us were at another level, was very heartening. I just looked at her and prayed that her day would come. When I saw the little group gather around her later that week and she retired from the race, I was pondering several scenarios. All of this gave me plenty of confidence that the Festina scandal of 1998 had been a watershed. PED abuse was now shifted to centre stage and quality efforts were being made to develop tests, and even if the sporting authorities seemed, at best, inept, at least the civil authorities were taking the matter seriously.
One thing of which I was certain was that I could stand up to any pressures of bullying from team-management or team-mates. British Cycling and the antics of that minority of unprofessional staff had hardened me to what I needed to do. In 2000, I had let Simon Burney laugh at me and tell the mechanic that he should not do as I so politely asked and put my bike back how I wanted it. Now I would tell anyone in the same circumstances exactly what I thought of him and take the bike to another national team and ask them to do it. I was ready to stand my ground with any drugs issues and had mentally steeled myself for that likely encounter.
And let’s put this completely in context. There would be a bunch of men working very closely with young women and the men would hold positions of power. Dad and Mum researched the problems and shared with me studies from Sweden and Canada, showing endemic abuse of position by male coaches with female athletes. I didn’t think for a moment that such basic motives would recognise international boundaries. PED abuse was just going to be one of several factors I would have to deal with.
Those first few months of 2002 were critical to confirming or destroying my ideas about whether I could be competitive at elite level. As you now know, I won my second race. What I could not know was that preparation through the winter of 2001–02 would only ever be matched by that of 2006-07 in my whole career.
In my first year, I was exposed to pressures by the team. I said ‘no’, didn’t get my wages and didn’t last the season. I pressed the UCI, and by early 2004 I’d got my wages and later Dazzani was arrested for supplying PEDs. It would be nice to point out that I had been instrumental in helping expose the drug-pushers at this time, but I wasn’t. I trusted in the new tests and the ever-more aggressive actions of the civil authorities. At Deia-Pragma, the fact that the first rider I met, Fany Lecourtois, had been so solid morally, was a great fillip. That Giorgio Zauli had not let us come to him but had actively come seeking us, even after he had left the team, to warn us about Dazzani, was another great boost. There were decent people in women’s cycling; around us the war was fully engaged and I thought at the time being won.
And who could I take my experiences to if I did want to get involved? After starting the year with a debilitating battle with my home federation, that only came to an end when they turned up at a race without the right number of riders; we had just a few weeks of truce before the next crisis that was only solved when the email was found stating what they denied they had said. My home federation was not casting itself in a role that trust in them could be countenanced.
I am proud that at the end of 2002, at the start of negotiations with Maurizio Fabretto, I made it very clear that no drips, syringes or any other products were to be kept in the team house in which I would live. It worked, and it is a pleasure to record that Maurizio never put any pressure, overt or subliminal, on me to use PEDs, nor did any other team-mates suggest anything. I was clean – and if you lived in the house with me you had to be clean there as well.
Again, with Rochelle Gilmore and Dutch sisters Chantal and Ghita Beltman I found house-mates who I could trust. In the summer of 2003, UK Sport worked with my solicitor Mike Townley and they recognised the changes we – Mike, Dad and I – wanted within the sport to strengthen its governance; one of the elements was an Athlete Charter to formalise the relationship between national governing bodies and the athletes they were meant to be supporting. The other aspect of change was in relation to PEDs, and the first opportunity for me to properly address the issue was on 29 October 2003.
Michele Verroken at Drug-Free Sport, the forerunner of the UK Anti-Doping Agency (UKADA), had given a presentation and sent out a brief email asking how we were finding the voluntary ‘whereabouts’ policy. In the USA, they had recently introduced a ‘three misses and you get a positive’ rule. What did we think? Sara Symington was our cycling representative and responded truthfully, stating that she was not aware of any whereabouts system being run at all by British Cycling and cited athletes who were not present when testers called, which at that time carried no sanction whatsoever.
I wrote back, copying all on the circulation list with three pages of detail, telling them that we had to press for compulsory whereabouts diaries and out-of-competition testing in British Cycling. Reading it now, I can see I also urged that the then exemption for out-of-competition positive for amphetamines be removed, as this was a weakness in the system. I regaled everyone that in anti-doping at one race on the continent, I was shocked to see one rider take in a big file full of medical exemptions. Would she have a ‘prescription’ for every adverse substance that might show up in her sample? The whole process needed tightening up.
I am proud of several of the things I wrote that day in October:
This is not an issue to sit on our hands and let go by us. It is the biggest issue in our sport. In 1998 at the time of the Festina affair, doping was endemic in cycling . . . Either it matters to us whether a set of druggies steal the medals off us at Athens or it does not. Either we are going to do something about it or we are just going to watch.
In this area I think there is zero chance of a lead being shown by the male side of the sport. Just look at the history of most of the directeur sportifs . . . They are also talking big bucks. For the women at least we do not have the issue of big bucks!! And I honestly think there is a significant number of girls who do not take drugs and want to see those that do driven out of the sport, a far more effective number than in the men’s pro peloton.
I spoke to David Brailsford very strongly about this very issue on Monday, urging him to get on the back of the UCI. As you know I am quite prepared to stand on my own at any time, but on an issue as big as this, I suggest it is in all our interests to work together. Is it worth you all emailing David Brailsford and asking him to take up the various issues with the UCI? That will be your decision. My position is clear.
My email was forwarded to Michele Verroken and Miriam Batten, an officer at Drug-Free Sport. She wrote back, and we started a dialogue. I placed myself on the list for voluntary testing, supporting a WADA programme in relation to a test they wanted to develop for Human Growth Hormone, at that time undetectable. WADA hoped to have it ready for Athens. Anything I could do to speed up the process of snaring the criminals.
Dave Brailsford and I swapped a couple of emails on the subject and Dad spoke to him at length. The disappointing news at this time was that while a number of other sports had signed up to the WADA protocol, football and cycling had not. On 20 February, I wrote to Dave asking if he could get British Cycling to press for a change of heart at the UCI. Our representative was Brian Cookson, the BC president. Dad and I wrote reminders about the same thing on 15 March, 28 March, 6 April and 16 May, all to no effective response.
When I spoke out to the press in late May about this, and about some of the competitors I would be lining up against at Athens, it caught the press. At this time Jeanson’s Canadian doctor had testified under oath to his professional body that he had prescribed EPO to Jeanson for non-medical purposes, but the cycling authorities had decided, in their infinite wisdom, that such evidence was not a suitable reason for suspending her racing licence, especially with an Olympic road race a few months away. I must have pointed out the ridiculous nature of this stance to a journalist. Next thing I had a BOA press officer ring me up to tell me not to talk about such things, as the authorities were dealing with all of this very effectively and I should not let it worry me.
It was an extraordinary line to take. You try getting on the start line with somebody juiced up with EPO and try to win the one race that is going to make your career. I thought the authorities were doing nothing and would continue to do nothing because they had their heads stuck deep in the ground. We sent the BOA the whole string of correspondence dating back to 20 February, with a polite suggestion that this position was false. Dad wrote to Dave Brailsford again on 15 June and then everything blew up when Dave was taken into custody along with David Millar.
Dave now became more supportive and suggested that my proposal be put to the Board of British Cycling. Cookson replied that if I wished to do something I could do it myself, but that British Cycling were not going to act on my suggestions. Via Dad, I then shared all my experiences of life in the peloton with John Scott, head of Drug-Free Sport, and Liz Nicholl, director for Elite Performance at UK Sport. One of the interactions between Dad and Dave from this time is worth quoting. Dave was always saying the male pro riders returning from the continent did not want to participate in out-of-competition testing in the UK, as they were tested enough already. I had an entirely different view.
Be very proud of what you are doing Dave. Nobody has got near to sorting it out before . . .
Nicole keeps on telling me, ‘Dad, you just don’t understand their point of view. They do not think like you. They don’t view it as cheating, they ignore the health risks, putting them alongside the risk of a crash and if you try and stop them, they will think you are robbing them. They also think that every single other rider in the world is using drugs as well. They cannot contemplate the idea that anyone could ride clean.’
Dave responded:
Despite all the problems of late I do feel that the one good to come out of the Millar affair is that it has given me a window of opportunity to play hardball on this issue and now is the time to act.
. . . I also believe UK Sport will back me . . . I will keep you updated on progress.
Dave received the support from Liz Nicholl and John Scott at UK Sport and out-of-competition testing and haematological screening was introduced for all BC cyclists. I did not introduce it, Dave did; but I am proud of the pressure I brought to the matter.
For the remainder of 2004 and 2005, I stayed with Acca Due O and continued to live with Nonna in a house where I was confident none of the other cyclists were keeping PEDs. The new tests caught out Tyler Hamilton, and on the women’s side there was a single positive at Athens, that of a Colombian cyclist who won a bronze on the track, Maria Luisa Calle Williams. She was immediately stripped of her medal. The system seemed to be working.
Later, I had a stand-off with Maurizio before a stage race when he wanted to introduce a new rider. I knew that this rider had an instance where a ‘health rest’ was imposed on her because her haematocrit was above the 48% threshold allowed for female riders. I was delighted that Maurizio went with my call and this girl did not join us.
In June 2005, Maurizio told me Calle Williams was going to join our ranks. I was astonished, as I thought she would still be serving a two-year ban, but a quick bit of research showed that on 27 April she had beaten Kristin Armstrong to become Pan American Champion. After that in May, she had ridden a round of the road World Cup that I was doing my hardest to try and win. What on earth was going on? Her defence was that the team doctor instructed her to take a medicine for her headache that he did not know contained a banned product, and that she was an innocent caught up in the incompetence of others. With that I can sympathise greatly.
I got on to John Scott in early June to find out what was going on. That she had her licence back and was riding seemed to catch everyone on the hop. John wrote back saying:
. . . we have had extensive dialogue with WADA in putting this response together for you.
Maria Luisa Calle has lodged an appeal to CAS against the IOC decision to withdraw her medal. We understand the case will be dealt with by CAS on August 25, 2005. We are continuing to investigate what the procedure is for the IF (UCI) when an athlete is sanctioned at an Olympic Games as you make the point about her continuing to race.
Over a month later and after another telephone call and another email reminder, John again wrote back, on 13 September:
. . . we are continuing to probe these issues but it has been difficult to get information from the UCI. We clearly have to maintain a good working relationship with them and so I cannot push too hard. I am continuing to pursue them and will get back to you as soon as I have clarification . . .
I replied and then John wrote again on 28 September – a lovely response. He was getting nowhere with the Colombian Federation and ‘similarly the UCI are being equally uncooperative . . .’
The UCI being uncooperative – now who would have thought that? So what was going on? In September or October 2004, the Columbian Cycling Federation assembled a panel to hear Calle Williams’s appeal. This panel found in favour of the appeal, and then appealed to have the IOC judgement set aside, so she could have her medal back. This went before the CAS who heard the case in two hearings. The first on 11 March 2005 heard evidence and then, ‘before it had completed its award on 15 April 2005, the UCI solicitor, Verbiest, presented opinion from himself dated 14 April and support from an expert witness Dr Saugy dated 16 April [ie. the day after the decision was to be confirmed] that generated a second hearing on 25 August.’
In the meantime, Calle Williams got her licence back in April 2005 and was riding again. With the support of John at Drug-Free Sport and Liz, I continued to badger. I was particularly upset that she was riding the 2005 road World Cup before the CAS had even heard all the evidence, let alone concluded.
So much for WADA protocol. Dad represented me at a meeting with John Scott in London. He took with him this and a number of other issues. Prominent and still burning with me were the number of riders I saw going into anti-doping with files of exemptions from their doctors. Surely some sort of audit could be done; surely these riders couldn’t be taking all this medication simultaneously? Dad came back from the meeting in London very despondent. The officials claimed there was nothing they could do on any of the issues. Apparently there were very many, very poorly, athletes competing at elite level. Well, I don’t know about any of the others but if I was unwell, I never finished in any of the top positions and always seemed to finish near the back.
Correspondence went back and forth until in early 2006, John was good enough to send me a copy of the report from CAS. After that, once again, if I wanted something changed I could write to WADA myself. I wrote to WADA president Dick Pound. After receiving a prompt acknowledgement, all went quiet. I wrote again and again. Eventually, I sent electronic mail and a ‘signed for’ written copy asking when my inquiry might receive the answer promised in the acknowledgement. The next day I received a reply from Oliver Niggli, who had not been at the hearing in March 2005 but had represented WADA in August 2005 at the CAS. The Colombian Federation could find Calle Williams innocent and thus had authority to remove any personal sanction. The CAS were responsible for determining whether she was disqualified from the Olympic result. That the two decisions were based on entirely separate evidence sets seemed something he did not want to write to me about. I wrote again on 12 December and eventually received a reply saying that no further correspondence would be engaged in.
I did my best. Was Calle Williams innocent and deserving of her medal? I will let you research more and develop your own opinion. Was this due process effective? I would like to believe that, by being a thorn in their side, I would cause those in authority to think twice when acting in future. As to the biggest question – should home federations be entrusted to determine decisions? – I think the historic evidence is that too often they fail to act as they should. It had taken me until January 2007 to push through the system to a conclusion. Calle Williams would have completed her two-year ban before that! However, as to what mattered to the team and me, Maurizio was again superb. He turned down Calle Williams and I didn’t have to ride on the same team as her. Thanks for backing me, Maurizio, we’ll do it clean and burn trying.
I was always happy that I could resist temptation myself, and I trusted that small number of team-mates and team helpers who I allowed close around me. If convictions were rare on the men’s side, they were even more of a rarity on the women’s. Beyond the few who were positive or given ‘health rests’, the reality was that there were a good number of characters on the women’s scene whose behaviour and actions raised suspicions. If I wanted to live a life where I did not come into contact with them, I needed to give up professional cycling.
Mostly the evidence was soft. Someone might take a sudden detour in the team car to pick up a parcel – why did it have to be picked up now? What’s in the box? Shoes? Can I have a look at them? No. But of course, this was a large group of women, not all of whom were that interested in winning the race; there were other motives, so counter stories and gossip formed a constant background noise. I learnt to rely only on what I experienced at first hand or second hand from a tiny group of very close friends. Associating and working with the ‘suspicious’ was a necessary evil I came to terms with very early on.
What to do when there was one of those jaw-dropping moments? I remember once during the drive after a stage when I was in a car with one of the male helpers; I was in great form, but I had just been made to look very ordinary in a hilly stage by the winner and was questioning quite what the nature of her training could be. What was she doing to make her so much better than me?
‘It’s not the training, it’s the preparation,’ came the response.
‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s what she uses to prepare for the event.’
‘How do you know how she prepares for the event?’
‘Well, I have supplied it to her in the past.’
A furious argument broke out. What did this guy think he was doing? But I knew that I could scream all I wanted and he would deny it and possibly smear in some sexual story of how he had rejected the advances of a crazy mad woman. It would go nowhere. At that time there were no hotlines. Later, I informed British Cycling, but I knew there would be nothing they could do about it.
In Andy Walser I found somebody who I trusted implicitly. He shared my views on doping, and in the years I worked with him, he never once gave me a single cause for worry in respect to PED abuse. He had removed himself from a far more lucrative equivalent position on a male professional team to work with riders in an environment where he felt there was less doping. We both knew it was going on, but Andy was as determined as I was to try to carve out what we could from the sport, clean.
Later in our relationship, as my knee became a debilitating factor, Andy introduced me to Fabio Bartalucci, the doctor I would work with for two periods of my career, April 2008 to the end of the year, and 2011 to mid-2012. In all the time I worked with Fabio, I never encountered anything that generated any suspicion. I did know he was a medical doctor and that he had worked with men’s teams in the past. He never spoke to me about PEDs, he certainly had a keen doctor’s understanding of the operation of the knee in relation to cycling, and most critically was a keen cyclist himself. Why I think he was more effective than anyone else working with me, is that he would accompany me on rides and observe me at first hand. Together, we worked out a system of arrangements of tape to be applied to my knee to support the muscles. In the main, his training advice was always that I was overdoing both the volume and intensity and too often I arrived, ready to go out on a ride together, overtrained.
British Cycling were impressed with his work with me on my knees. I extolled his virtues to them, just as I did in newspaper interviews enquiring how my rehabilitation was progressing. Jonathan Webb is the surgeon that so successfully operated on my knee, but Fabio was the one who ensured I was able to train and race on it without further damage, just at a time when I was thinking of retiring. I was able to tell British Cycling that he never offered me any PEDs and was always very professional, and that his work with me was exemplary.
After I released my retirement statement, Dad was able to direct me to the forum of Cyclingnews.com. The research capacity of some of the posters is to be marvelled at. There I found out that Fabio had been detained at the Giro of 2001 in a sweep that netted a total of 86 riders and support staff, including Max Sciandri. From this, 11 (not including Fabio) were taken to court and six were found guilty and five acquitted. Some observers have made the link: doctor, male team, dope expert.
I would be naive to think that ‘not proven’ equates to ‘innocent’, but if, as some would like, all athletes are guilty by association then David Millar’s arrest places every single Team GB cyclist of the last 12 years in that same group, because Dave Brailsford was also taken in for questioning with him. If I am discredited because of association, then there is not a single cyclist of the last 40 years who is not similarly tainted. Dazzani I can name, others I cannot because of the libel laws, but rest assured UKADA have their names and a number of those names the forerunner of UKADA had many years ago.
My contemporary comments on David Millar’s return to Team GB are known. Not public are my comments I put in writing on 19 July 2004 to Dave Brailsford on learning that Millar might be a rider representative for anti-doping. One of the conditions I proposed to be placed upon him before even contemplating such a position was the return of his 2001 and 2003 medals and acceptance of his lifetime ban from the Olympics. He had his 2003 medal stripped but retains his 2001 medal, and of course he returned to ride at London 2012. By his actions, he does not understand how doping robs others. He cannot possibly represent clean athletes. He might sit on the committee at WADA as rider representative, but certainly he does not represent me. When he can properly suffer for his principles, then he might.
Towards the start of this section, I stated that in hindsight the views I took with me into my first season were wrong. I think they were wrong because I underestimated how hard a minority of my rivals trained. In fact they trained far less than I expected them to. I also underestimated how distorted a view a minority had of the sport. They wanted the glory without the work. Therefore, PED usage was greater than I imagined. After my first year, I made it very clear, at the teams I was at, that I would not countenance any doping practices around me. I thank Maurizio for appeasing me in 2005. In our little house in Switzerland with Univega, again I was content. In 2008 with Halfords, in 2009 with my own Vision 1, and then back with the U23 girls, it was a relief that I had no need to worry about PEDs. With Walter Ricci, I set my stall out very clearly and I did not encounter any doping practices while at the teams he managed in 2011 and 2012.
Is the sport cleaner now? I’m not in a position to answer that. Only the technical experts can advise on how they are countering the threats ahead. But the main factor is that the agencies have a new sense of determination about them now. Just look at how diligently the Italian authorities pursued Alejandro Valverde in the Operation Puerto case. The Italian Olympic Committee (CONI) bided their time and waited until the Tour came to a finish in Italy and Valverde was then within their jurisdiction. I would love to have been there the day they got him, but then there are so many events to choose from: Millar, Jeanson, Lance, Tyler. I must not dwell on the ones that got away, those who I cannot write about in this book. The truth is: there are a lot of names still in the record books that should not be there.