Cycling great can't outride dope claims

Armstrong denies taking performance-enhancing drugs. Picture / Reuters

The latest doping scandal to descend on Lance Armstrong will take more to brush aside than the cyclist's dismissal that it is mere "tabloid journalism".

French newspaper L'Équipe has produced documents supporting its claim that six of Armstrong's samples taken during the 1999 Tour de France - his first of seven wins - were positive for the drug erythropoietin (EPO).

Some - the "A samples" - were used in tests at the time, when EPO was undetectable, and the "B samples" frozen for research. The French laboratory which pioneered the EPO test went back to the B samples last year as part of its research to improve the test.

The laboratory did not know whose samples it was testing - they carry only code numbers - but the newspaper has published six documents, each bearing Armstrong's name, the signature of his manager and the identical code to that on the six positives.

The results are unlikely to lead to Armstrong being stripped of any of his wins. But they may have ramifications for the seven lawsuits he is fighting in Britain, France and the United States, and for his reputation.

Armstrong has responded that it is a "witch hunt" and repeated, again, that he has never taken performance-enhancing drugs, never failed a drug test. Others - mainly Americans - have suggested the real agenda is French pique that a US rider has taken over their race.

But the core issue is the integrity of the sport, and the French had very good reason to get serious about doping.

In 1998, Festina team staffer Willy Voet was found with hundreds of doping products on his way to the start of France's showcase event.

The fact that there had not been a positive drug test in the Tour for years, and organisers had proclaimed this as evidence doping was not an issue, enriched the embarrassment.

The naivete, to put it mildly, of the sport's administrators was underlined by Voet's book, Breaking the Chain, in which he boasted of doping hundreds of riders without a failed drug test.

In 36 tests of Armstrong's samples in the four Tours since EPO became detectable in 2001, no illegal substances were discovered - other than a disputed positive for corticosteroid, also in 1999.

Evidence he is clean? Or that drug testing is as easily defeated now as it was in the 1990s?

None of the big doping scandals since sprinter Ben Johnson's positive to a steroid in 1988 are down to drug testing alone.

Chinese swimmers doped on human growth hormone and the Festina bust resulted from random customs searches.

The exposure of Balco, the San Francisco firm which designed drugs for sports cheats - casting a shadow over sprinting's fastest couple, Marion Jones and Tim Montgomery - came about only because a sample of what is now known as the steroid THG was leaked.

Don Catlin, head of the team at the Los Angeles laboratory which identified the drug, was initially encouraged by the fallout, which included exposing the dope-ridden state of US sports such as baseball and American football.

But he soon realised the THG saga simply confirmed "the system has failed to deal with the problem, and it will fail now".

"You can get away with stuff with everybody looking right at you," Catlin told Outside Magazine.

As did British Tour de France rider David Millar, who won a world road cycling title doped on EPO. He was caught when police searched his apartment and found used vials containing EPO traces. Millar has yet to fail a single dope test.

It wasn't the scientists, either, who got Belgian cycling heroes Johan Museeuw or Frank Vandenbroucke. Museeuw, ruled by a judge to be using EPO and Aranesp, a similar but undetectable drug, was undone by email exchanges with his drug supplier, a veterinarian. Police found EPO and muscle-booster clenbuterol at Vandenbroucke's home. Long careers, passed every dope test.

Athletes proclaiming their "perfect" test record don't cut it with sports doping academic Charles Yesalis, a Pennsylvania State University epidemiologist. Perfecting tests for old drugs such as EPO, he says, gives a huge advantage to athletes able to exploit the latest wave of performance-enhancing pharmacology.

"I recently read off a list of these new blood-oxygen expanders to a group of toxicologists, and none had heard of them," Yesalis told the New Yorker. "That's how fast things are moving."

In this year's Tour all riders were tested at least once. All were reported clear.

What, then, of the arrest of Dario Frigo after 10 vials of EPO were found in his girlfriend's car as the race moved into the Alps? The Italian had been banned in 2001 after police caught him with two doping products not seen in sport before.

Frigo's case echoes that of Raimondas Rumsas, who faces a court hearing in November after the discovery of EPO and other doping products during the 2002 Tour in a van driven by his wife. Rumsas had shown dramatic improvement to finish third.

Back in 1997, Frenchman Gilles Delion joined a handful of professional cyclists who had broken their sport's code of silence on doping. A team director had told him, he said, that "you can't be among the world's best 50 riders if you don't take EPO".

Times change and so, perhaps, have the odds. When Frigo was bundled into a police car last month, he was in 52nd place, more than 20 minutes down on Armstrong.

Armstrong transcends sport. His fans - including many who don't understand cycling and haven't even watched him on television - are like disciples. People want fairytale heroes. Many have an emotional investment in the story of a cancer survivor who conquered the world's toughest, dirtiest sport on no more than mineral water.

So does Armstrong, whose legend and wealth are built on it.

But in a world of Prozac, Botox and cosmetic surgery, can we demand more of athletes? The answer has to be "yes" or there is no point agreeing on rules of competition, and where there are no boundaries, sport cannot exist.

It's about what we make of a cycling star who has hinted at a future political career, what we make of the Texan's parting shot upon retirement. "To all the cynics, I'm sorry for you," he said last month from the top of the podium on the Champs-Elysees, "I am sorry you can't believe in miracles."

What is EPO?

* Erythropoietin is a hormone produced by the kidney that promotes the formation of red blood cells by the bone marrow. The oxygen-carrying capacity of the blood is increased, boosting aerobic performance.

* Synthetic EPO, developed to treat anaemia, has been misused as a performance-enhancing drug. It is considered dangerous because it thickens the blood, raising the risk of heart attacks and strokes.

* EPO has been blamed for the sudden deaths of 18 cyclists. It was banned in 1990.

* The drug was involved in the 1998 Tour de France doping scandal which was the catalyst for the formation of the World Anti-Doping Agency.

Lance Armstrong

1971: Born in Texas, on September 18.

1992: Becomes pro cyclist.

1995: Tour de France, 36th overall. Alleged by New Zealander Stephen Swart to have encouraged Motorola teammates to dope with EPO, which Armstrong denied. Began working with Dr Michele Ferrari, sacked by Gewiss-Ballon team after he was quoted as saying "EPO is no more dangerous than orange juice".

1996: Diagnosed with testicular cancer but later declared free of disease after surgery and chemotherapy.

1999: Wins Tour de France for first time.

2001: Becomes only the fifth man to win Tour de France three times in succession.

2003: Wins a record-equalling fifth Tour. Splits from wife.

2004: Starts relationship with singer Sheryl Crow. Wins record-breaking sixth Tour de France. Stops work with Ferrari, after the doctor is convicted of sports fraud and illegally acting as a pharmacist.

2005: Wins an unprecedented seventh Tour de France and retires.

* Phil Taylor is a Weekend Herald senior writer who studied doping in sport on a Wolfson Fellowship to Cambridge University, England.