For the first time since signing my contract with Cofidis in 1996, I was facing uncertainty. Whether it was with Cofidis, or with another team, I had to succeed in 2003. I was under more pressure to get results than I’d ever been since turning pro; little did I know that the screw would soon be turned even tighter.
My salary for 2003 had reset to its default remuneration, the base level that I had been paid in 2000. This was because I had failed to achieve the necessary points in 2002 to activate the bonus system. This made me resentful. After all, I had missed the first half of the 2002 season because of glandular fever. Yes, I’d then flopped at the Vuelta—yet I’d won a stage at the Tour and been a player at almost every other race I competed in.
Unlike in 2001, when I was unaware of the intricacies of my contract, I now knew exactly what was at stake. I had grown very used to my high income and my spending power. Rob and Vicki Hayles used to say I had a leaf blower filled with money.
But it didn’t make sense to me that there could be such massive fluctuations in what I was paid. Bonuses didn’t motivate me—my goals were always to win certain events and become the best rider I could be—it was never about going to a certain race because it was easy to score points, or defending fourth place at another race in order to secure the points. Yet that is what I had to do if I wanted to fulfill my bonus requirement. Effectively, it wasn’t worth going in for the big targets because that meant using other lesser races as preparation events and thus scoring fewer points and not making the bonus. It wasn’t an ideal situation.
During an interview with the daily sports newspaper L’Équipe, I sounded off about it. The next thing I knew I was being called in to explain myself to François Migraine. I apologized to him but insisted that I didn’t think it was a good system. Of course, I’d had none of these qualms the year before when I’d been raking in the bonuses and benefiting from them. Money had become a motivation, but only because I’d grown used to it; before having that level of income, it hadn’t motivated me at all.
With that realization came the acknowledgment that I would be doping during the year. Jesús and I had planned that I would prepare twice during the season: for the Tour de France and the World Championships. I had become a fully fledged doper, cold and calculating in the manner with which I used drugs. There had been a steady but constant development in my doping use, and now I knew what I was. I’d stopped lying to myself: I wasn’t a clean athlete anymore. I could push it to the back of my mind a lot of the time, but sometimes, usually when I was alone, I was crippled by guilt and self-loathing because of it.
—
I started 2003 a l’eau claire or clean. But I was chronically nervous and increasingly fretted about results. My goals were unrealistically high, and as I fell short of them I became even more stressed. By the time I got to Criterium International in late March, I was banging my head against the wall. Fifteen kilometers from the finish of the second stage, a race motorbike put me out of my misery.
Working his way through the peloton, the motorbike driver tried to squeeze through a gap that wasn’t there and knocked me off. I was flipped onto my side and pushed along the road until I ended up in a ditch, shocked and seriously ripped up. I was very beaten up in the crash, but the greatest damage was to my right arm. The skin had been ripped off, and the team doctor tried to sew it back together in the team bus. But the flap of skin wouldn’t stitch, as it had been so badly torn. I was so preoccupied with this mess that I didn’t pay much attention to the bruising on my thigh. I flew back to Biarritz wondering if the start to my season could get any worse.
It could. I woke up in the morning with a massively swollen thigh. A few hours later I was under general anesthetic at the local hospital as the swelling was emptied and a drain fitted. I had to stay in the hospital a further five days until they were happy that the drain could be removed. In total, I was off the bike for over three weeks—and then le Boss and I had one of our run-ins.
March 2003, Criterium International. Knocked off by a race official on a motorbike, I finished but then was hospitalized for five days on my return to Biarritz.
Although I had been back on the bike for only a few days, le Boss wanted me to race in Trophée des Grimpeurs, one of the most unforgiving races on the French calendar. I sent him my training programs from Jesús—including all the codes so that he could see I was being professional—but he was having none of it.
He began lining up the races. Next was the Four Days of Dunkirk (actually a six-day event). I did what he asked and suffered badly throughout, my legs hurting more than they’d ever done before. I could feel the untrained muscles being ripped to pieces by the massive workload and on the last day could barely get on the bike.
Then he entered me for the Tour of Picardie, only four days later, a similarly hard, flat, windy race. At least Picardie was only three days long, with a time trial as the final stage. I could barely walk and wondered how I was to survive. The day before the race I trained for only ten minutes or so, setting out with the rest of the guys but then turning around because my legs still felt so damaged.
Yet when I woke up on the morning of the first stage at Picardie, the leg pain had vanished. The next day, feeling normal again, I launched an attack, partly to test my form. Before I knew it, I was away with Nico Vogondy, my companion from the Circuit de la Sarthe echappée two years earlier.
It seemed a futile move, as we had over 80 kilometers to race, but, before we were caught, there was a time bonus sprint 20 kilometers from the finish that I picked up. I decided it wouldn’t be a bad idea to have that little buffer, in the light of the following day’s time trial.
My intuition paid off. I took second place in the time trial, just two seconds behind the stage winner. What had seemed like a silly escapade the day before had turned into the race-winning move. The three seconds I’d won in the bonus sprint enabled me to win the Tour of Picardie by one second. Somehow, I had turned things around.
The first phase of my season was over. I returned to Biarritz and then drove down to see Jesús and pick up everything I needed for a two-week training camp in Spain. I’d learned from my mistakes. So rather than holing up alone on a mountaintop, I had rented a villa on the Costa Blanca, in Calpe, and invited my sister, her fiancé, and our friend James Pope, also Fran’s business partner, to come down to join me.
Instead of sending myself on punishing monastic missions, I was trying to be more accepting and pragmatic. I bought a mini-fridge so that I could keep my EPO hidden in my room, away from the rest of the household. At the same time, I made sure Fran and James never knew about my involvement in doping. Maybe they had their suspicions, but I was very good at keeping my secret. They believed in me—they had heard me railing against the doping scene. It would probably have been the last thing they expected, especially as they didn’t know the reality of what went on behind the scenes.
But then my career had followed a steady linear progression, and everything I’d achieved up to that point was within the realms of possibility as a nondoper. There hadn’t been any anomalous results, and this was what made it possible for me to keep off the doping radar. In the two previous years I had won races clean, just as I had done by winning Picardie before heading off on my preparation camp.
Fran was the chef. She kept my diet on track, and, as I steadily lost weight, it felt like doping had become part of my life—simply another part of le métier, the job. But my training was terrible, and I never felt less like I was doping than I did those couple of weeks. My body was in revolt after getting thrown into Dunkirk and Picardie. Despite being prepared, I was desperate for everything to come together in time for my next big race, the Dauphiné Libéré.
—
The Classique des Alpes is a one-day race, an aperitif, before the giant climbs of the week-long Dauphiné. I came in third, and, that evening, on my way down to dinner at the hotel, I bumped into the organizers of the Tour de France at a cocktail reception.
In the spirit of bonhomie, I joined them for a couple of glasses, something that perhaps not many modern riders might do. My sociability met with their approval.
“It’s a shame there aren’t more riders like you,” they said, “willing to have a glass or two of champagne, like in the old days.”
Yet I felt deceitful. Shaking hands on a podium was one thing, clinking glasses with the Tour organizers while being toasted was a little harder to swallow.
Over the next week, my preparation paid off, and I hit flying form. For the first time, I was racing against Lance in the mountains. I finished third overall in the Dauphiné, behind him and the Basque climber Iban Mayo. Suddenly, riding for the general classification—being a contender—at the Tour itself was a real possibility.
After the race, I flew to Madrid, where I stopped off to pick up the last of the pre-Tour EPO from Jesús. I spent a couple of days in Spain before heading back to Biarritz to fine-tune for the Tour.
The 2003 Tour was the centenary edition, so the race route was designed to pay tribute to all the drama, grandeur, and tradition of the previous century. The prologue was on a huge stage, starting under the Eiffel Tower and racing through the heart of Paris. I desperately wanted to win it. If I did, I would then be able to take the rest of the race as I pleased, with no pressure, and hopefully be able to have a proper tilt at the overall classification.
I arrived in Paris in ideal shape. Everything was spot-on—Jesús had done his job perfectly. But my prologue bike was a different matter. The team’s equipment was laughable, and, in desperation, I had sourced my own handlebars and front wheel. I had given up on their ever supplying me with what I needed.
Two days before the prologue, the team mechanics rebuilt my bike. When I popped out to their truck—their mobile workshop—to check progress, they showed me their latest weight-saving idea, of removing the front derailleur and using only one chain ring. They’d also removed the front derailleur changer, making the bike look very stripped down and more like a racing machine than it ever had done before.
I am passionate about my equipment, but I am no mechanic—it didn’t even cross my mind that the front derailleur was a key part of the bike’s “drive train.” It may have served no purpose in changing gears, but it was there to catch the chain if it was thrown off the chain ring. But the mechanics were so convinced that it was a good idea, so certain that it would make me faster, I was sold immediately. I took the bike for a spin, and it seemed as if there would be no problem.
But on the morning of the prologue, Bondue took a decision that proved disastrous. All of the chain rings on the team bikes were changed. Bondue had decided that we had to use our sponsor’s chain ring for the Tour, rather than the standard chain rings we’d been using for the rest of the year.
As one of the favorites for the prologue, I was the last Cofidis rider to start. I waited for my start time with a sinking feeling, as I watched our riders slip their chains, one by one. One rider actually fell down the start ramp when his chain came off on the first pedal stroke. I began to simmer with anger: I’d been fighting for years to get the time trial bike I wanted, yet nothing ever changed.
It was a typical Cofidis scenario. The chains were derailing because they weren’t compatible with the chain rings. At the last minute, as panic spread through the staff, I was asked if they should change my ring back to the standard one. Stubbornly, I refused. I didn’t want anybody tinkering with my bike so close to the start, but also I decided if it was going to come off, then so be it. Bondue’s head would roll for it.
Once out on the course, I was quicker than I’d expected and came through the first time check significantly faster than anybody else. I couldn’t believe it when I saw the intermediate time board giving me a four-second lead on the next rider. I’d planned to stay within myself the first half of the prologue and then to bring it home with everything I had into the final kilometers. Four seconds was a massive gain, considering the course and the conditions. Suddenly, I was filled with the certainty that I was going to win, that there was nothing that could stop me.
As I exited the penultimate corner, I began the final push toward the flamme rouge, but the moment I pushed on the pedals all resistance had disappeared. Nothing happened. At first I couldn’t figure it out, but then I looked down and was horrified to see the chain dangling uselessly off the chain ring.
When I’d stopped pedaling as I cornered, the chain had gone slack and a little vibration from the road had bounced it off the chain ring. In a moment, my chances of winning the prologue of the centenary Tour had gone.
I had no front derailleur to catch the chain and guide it back on to the chain ring, so I had to lean down and delicately pick it up between forefinger and thumb and drop it precisely on the chain ring—while freewheeling down the course. I still don’t know how I found the lucidity to do that, as my heart rate was close to 190 and the adrenaline was pumping through me. I managed it, but I was almost at a standstill by the time I had dropped the chain back in place.
I found a final rush of power with the anger that was now raging through me and sprinted as hard as I could. I crossed the line two-hundredths of a second behind Australian Brad McGee. It was divine justice. Brad, one of my closest friends, had managed to stay clean, despite everything. I couldn’t help thinking that that was the way it was supposed to be.
Even so, I didn’t feel that philosophical in the immediate aftermath. I sat in the team bus fuming, until I spotted Migraine. I homed in on him and led him across to the ONCE team’s compound and showed him their bikes.
“François,” I said, “that is a time trial bike. I’ve been fighting for years to get something that is just a little bit like this.”
Then my resentments against everything came spilling out. I demanded Bondue’s ceremonial downsizing, making it clear to Migraine that he was at fault and that he should have nothing to do with the sporting side of the team from then on. I got what I wanted. Alain’s head rolled, and we had a meeting the next morning when the whole team was told this.
It was my payback. I blamed Bondue for a lot of things stretching back over the years; I blamed him for far more than just losing my chain. Deep down, maybe I held him responsible for everything to do with Cofidis—as if he had betrayed me somehow.
—
The next morning, out of sight of my teammates and the crowds, I sat down in the shadow of the Stade de France and wept. That was when Lance saw me.
Immediately after the prologue, my principal emotion had been anger. The next morning, as we climbed off the bus for the start of the first stage, I was overwhelmed with disappointment.
I thought nobody had seen me at such a low ebb, but there, answering a pre-race call of nature a few yards away, was Lance. He came over, consoled me, and said he’d call that evening. He did, and the conversation helped.
My 2003 Tour didn’t really get much better. On the first rest day I woke up with a sore throat that quickly became bronchitis, and suffered through the middle week before rallying a few days prior to the end of the race.
On another day, I would have been excited by the final time trial, but the torrential rain and howling wind dampened my spirits. I didn’t recce the course or look at a course map and my warm-up was laughable, yet as soon as I rolled off the start ramp and realized that I actually felt good, I embraced the apocalyptic conditions. It was the first time I enjoyed being on my bike since the pre-chain debacle of the prologue.
Visibility was terrible, and the roads were treacherous—I twice came past guys who were sprawled in the road after crashing. I crashed, too, in the last 5 kilometers, yet this didn’t stop me winning by fifteen seconds and posting one of the fastest-ever time trials, with a 54 kilometers per hour average speed. I’m good when I’m relaxed, but I’m even better when it’s wet.
After the Tour ended, I signed with Cofidis for two more years. It was the big money contract I had wanted. I had been in protracted negotiations with Bjarne Riis and his team, but now that Bondue was out of the picture, I was sure I’d be able to steer things more myself. In truth, my loyalty toward the team was based more on the longevity of our relationship than anything else.
Brad McGee and I spent some time together in Biarritz after the Tour ended. Brad knew that I had been prepared, and we both knew that what had happened in the Tour prologue was right—that it was karma—and that he was supposed to win. I had told him this the next day. Brad understood that I had made my decisions, and yet he did his best not to judge. He was one of the few, an untouchable, like Moncoutie.
There was talk of the Vuelta and more preparation with Jesús, but I couldn’t face it. Instead of heading to altitude and back to doping, I stayed in Biarritz. I had been in regular contact with Dave Brailsford through the year—although he knew nothing of my preparation programs—and now my thoughts were all about racing with Team GB at the World Championships.
I knew I had to ride the Vuelta to find form, but I turned up overweight and unfit. I was one of the first riders to be dropped in the first road stage—even I was a little shocked. I got a grip and decided that suffering through the Vuelta would be about getting ready for the Worlds, in just a few weeks’ time. In the first time trial, I set off expecting very little, yet I finished second. I was baffled; maybe it was just down to pure talent. However, any illusions I had of sporting genius were stamped out in the next day’s mountain stage.
I was on the ropes, last on the road, for most of that day. For a good 80 kilometers, I was with just one other rider, far behind the gruppetto. He ended up throwing in the towel, but I knew that I had to finish the Vuelta if I wanted to win the Worlds time trial. Eventually, I caught the gruppetto just 4 kilometers from the finish. The toughest day was behind me: from then on I got better and better.
More by luck than judgment—I had come perilously close to not making it through the first week—I finished the race in good shape. Now I had to hook up with Jesús.
On the last day of the Vuelta in Madrid, I picked up a batch of EPO and took the first dose. Jesús had advised me to take the next two doses of EPO directly into the vein. That way, he said, it would work faster and disappear out of my system well before race day. It was the first time I’d taken EPO intravenously.
From Madrid, I flew to Manchester, to spend time with Team GB, testing the new superbike that had been built for me, before heading out to Canada for the World Championships.
It was a joy being with the British team. Dave was a great leader and an even better manager, and there was focus to everything that they did. Their organization and expertise made Cofidis look like a small cycling club. Dave had followed through on his promises from the year before and had done everything possible at his end to enable me to win the Worlds. All I had to do was to be physically ready.
After I had finished the doses of EPO, I was left with two empty syringes. I didn’t want to put them in the hotel bin, so I slipped them into a side pocket in my suitcase, planning to dispose of them later. By this point, I was so blasé about doping that I didn’t really think it was such a big problem to carry around some empty syringes until I found a safe and secure place to deposit them.
By taking EPO I had guaranteed that I would be fulfilling my end of the bargain. Nobody in British cycling had any idea that I was doping, as they were absolutely ignorant of the world I lived in. They looked up to the European scene, even if, like everybody, they knew there was bad stuff going on. But it never crossed their minds that I was involved in any of it. Because of this it was possible for me to conceal my secret.
Although the bike that Team GB had built for me was a dream—like nothing I’d ever ridden before—I was plagued by doubts. The new bike gave me a clear performance advantage, but that only made me even more nervous as I knew how much time, money, and effort had been put into building it for me. I also had EPO, testosterone, and cortisone running through my veins—there was surely no way I could lose, yet I was terrified that I might.
October 2003, Hamilton World Championships. On the podium, victorious but vacant.
But I didn’t lose—I achieved a crushing victory. I was so much quicker that I realized that I would win at the halfway point. In fact, I spent the last 10 kilometers trying to save energy so that I’d be good for the road race three days later. After I’d won I stood on the podium, listening to “God Save the Queen.” I was World Time Trial champion, yet I felt almost nothing. I should have been choked, moved, just as other athletes were at such a moment. I wanted to experience that feeling. Instead, I just thought: Job done.
More than ever, I was fully aware that I needed to rethink what I was doing and where I was going. The time in Canada had allowed me to talk to Dave Brailsford at length. He picked up on my unhappiness, and we discussed my future.
The Athens Olympics were less than a year away. There was talk of my becoming part of the ever-improving track team and maybe even riding the individual pursuit. I knew what this would mean, and I made the decision that if I was going to work with Dave and the national team, then I would do it clean.
I’d become so drained by the professional world. I’d become world champion, but it was a hollow victory. The possibility of working with Dave and Team GB opened up options. He reinforced my self-belief, his was the voice I needed to hear.
I was sick of doping. Team GB offered escape from that world. As we flew out of Canada, I knew it was over, that I’d never dope again. From now on, I told myself, things would be different.