How to Get Away With Doping

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/16/opinion/sunday/how-to-get-away-with-doping.html

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Manchester, England — In 2004, I was in a French prison cell, arrested by a Paris drug squad on the order of an examining magistrate, a powerful official in the French criminal justice system. It was right that I should have been there: I had broken the law — as it turned out, not French law, but sporting law. I had taken performance-enhancing drugs and I had won some of the biggest races in the sport of cycling, including a World Championship title. I had cheated.

In those days, those of us who were doping considered ourselves above the law. It was the reign of Lance Armstrong, and not only was he treated like a king, but he also acted like one.

Looking back, I see that the downfall of that era — one that had existed, to some degree, in professional cycling for nearly a century — was long overdue. The yearslong struggle of the antidoping authorities to get control of the sport eventually enabled it to reboot. In the post-Armstrong era, cycling has made significant strides toward becoming a clean sport.

In recent weeks, however, we’ve been forced to ask ourselves if we are actually in the light. The leak of Olympic athletes’ World Anti-Doping Agency records by the anonymous hacker group known as Fancy Bears has opened the world’s eyes to a disturbingly gray area in sporting law: the therapeutic use exemption.

This is the official name for an athlete’s right to use a banned substance — under medical supervision and with a doctor’s approval. The T.U.E. rightfully exists in order to enable an athlete who has a legitimate medical condition to continue to compete. In baseball, there has long been widespread use of T.U.E.s to enable players to take the attention deficit disorder drug Adderall. And as the Fancy Bears hack shows, the practice of obtaining T.U.E.s — ostensibly to treat disorders like asthma and allergies — is common among world-class athletes, not just in running and cycling, but in rowing, hockey, tennis and even golf.

It is possible that all the T.U.E.s revealed in the WADA leak were for legitimate medical reasons, but the system is open to abuse. Some of the medical conditions used to justify a T.U.E. can be difficult to validate; and as I discovered, an unscrupulous rider and doctor could exaggerate or simply make up symptoms that would merit a prescription and exemption.

I always dreamed of competing in the Tour de France when I was growing up. My father was in the Royal Air Force, my mother was a teacher, and my godfather a Royal Marine. So I had a military upbringing; the difference between right and wrong was drilled into me from a young age. By the time I left home at 19, in 1996, to pursue my dream, I believe I was a good and decent young man. I was idealistic, even naïve; I saw the world in black and white.

I turned professional in 1997 and came face to face with the dark truth that professional cycling had a deeply embedded doping culture. I was told early on that it would be impossible to win the Tour de France clean, that this was a commonly known fact within “the peloton,” as the bunch of riders on the road is known — though it was something that even clean riders were forbidden to talk about: cycling’s “omertà” system. It took four years to turn me, too; my value system could hold on only that long.

I was worn down by the system. Being patted on the back for being a clean rider meant nothing, it felt like nobody cared whether I doped or not. I wanted to win the biggest races and compete against the best riders on the same terms. In order to do that, I accepted what had to be done — and there were enough people around me who’d been waiting in the wings to facilitate it.

By the 2001 season, I was taking the banned blood-boosting agent erythropoietin, or EPO, and testosterone in secret training camps before my target races; then, on three occasions, I took cortisone. The EPO and testosterone were anabolic — that is, they built me up; nothing that could be seen physically, although a blood test would reveal the changing numbers in my blood values that would lead to an increase in aerobic performance and improve my ability to recover from hard training efforts. I would make sure the performance-enhancing drugs were used only in training phases where I could be sure I wouldn’t be tested (this was before the athlete whereabouts system existed, so there was no out-of-competition testing). By the time I got to the races, my body was clean, although it carried the benefits of the drugs.

Once I hit my target levels and felt ready for the big push, a doctor would administer the cortisone via an intramuscular injection. In one sense, it would be like hitting a self-destruct button: The moment the drug entered my body, I would become catabolic. The cortisone would start to strip me down, and I began to use my own body as fuel.

First to go would be the excess fat I hadn’t been able to rid myself of, no matter how strict my diet. Then I would start to feel different: My sleep would become restless, yet in the mornings I’d feel more alert than ever. I’d begin to feel physically stronger, able to do things on the bike previously impossible. For me, this would mean being able to push bigger gears, which is the equivalent of lifting heavier weights. The effect was so powerful that the tendons in my knees and ankles would ache from the increased force they were dealing with.

The body’s natural reaction to such overloading is inflammation, but after the cortisone injection, the puffiness I’d normally see in my body disappeared. Veins I didn’t even know existed would bulge through my skin. The effect of a shot of cortisone was palpable, nothing like the subtle differences from the relatively small doses of EPO and testosterone I’d previously taken.

One drug in particular that is available with a T.U.E. has come to light in the Fancy Bears leak: triamcinolone acetonide, more commonly known by its brand names, Kenalog and Kenacort. This is a very powerful synthetic corticosteroid. I know this because I’ve used it, three times: the first for a medical reason, a terrible skin allergy that afflicted me during the final week of the 2001 Vuelta a España (Tour of Spain); the other times, for performance enhancement.

On one occasion, I received a T.U.E. for a fake tendon issue. A doctor simply wrote a prescription for an ankle injury that required an intra-articular injection, although the injection was then administered intramuscularly (at the time, injecting the drug intramuscularly was banned, hence the need to lie on the T.U.E., because, I can only assume, it is more powerful when administered in that way). The maximum dosage I ever took was 40 milligrams, which is in the range of the manufacturer’s recommended dosages.

The Kenacort was so powerful that it was ultimately destructive: Apart from being a catabolic agent, it would also suppress your immune system, making you more susceptible to infections. I didn’t like taking it, but I was so deep into what I was doing at the time that I did what I considered had to be done. Still, I took it only twice after 2001: for the 2002 Vuelta a España and the 2003 Tour de France. Both were big targets, as, for the first time, I was aiming for a high placing in the overall classification, and this required me to be lighter and stronger than ever before. Both times, I took an initial 20 to 40 milligram dose, and then topped up with 10 to 20 milligrams about 10 days later, in order to prolong the effects into the final week of the three-week stage race and to avoid too rapid a descent off it.

Kenacort was a once-a-year drug; the stress it put on your body required time to recover. You’d be mad to take it more often or in bigger doses, although, sadly, there were enough madmen around at the time in pro cycling who surely did just that.

The three times I took Kenacort were also the times I was the lightest I’d been in my career, yet I didn’t lose power — often the penalty when a rider sheds weight. Physically, I looked like a machine, muscle fibers were visible and a road map of veins crisscrossed my entire body. It made me better all around, yet the benefits were outweighed by the negatives. I am already a fairly wired person as it is, so the cortisone made me too edgy. It altered my mental state, my insomnia got worse and mood swings became more pronounced.

Ironically, neither race went particularly well. Going into the third week of the 2002 Vuelta, I was holding on to a top 10 spot in the overall classification, something I’d never been close to at that point in a Grand Tour. Then I crashed badly and withdrew from the race in protest at what I regarded as the organizers failure to ensure safe racing conditions. In the 2003 Tour de France, I so nearly had a perfect start: I would have won the opening prologue time trial if my chain hadn’t come off in the final kilometer; I finished second by .08 seconds. I then went down with bronchitis — probably a result of my weakened immune system — and my form suffered. I’d recovered enough by the last week to win a stage, in what was then the second fastest ever average speed for a long time trial, about 34 miles per hour over a course of more than 30 miles (a result that was later removed from the record books after I admitted to doping).

I was taking this powerful, potentially dangerous drug as a performance enhancer, yet I was doing so within the rules — thanks to the T.U.E. loophole. My doping, for that is what it was, could not be judged illegal as long as I fulfilled all the criteria demanded by the authorities. I was within the letter of the law, even though I was cheating it. I was in the gray zone.

By the time of my arrest, I was in a very troubled mental state. I had promised myself never to dope again after winning the World Championship time trial in 2003, but that didn’t stop the guilt. What was harder to live with were the lies I constantly had to tell — and the resentment I felt toward the sport, one that I had loved so much only a few years before.

When the police searched my apartment, they found two used EPO syringes I’d used for the Worlds the year before. I had kept them tucked away on a bookshelf as a morbid reminder of what I’d done. Yet it was those syringes that ultimately saved me — without them, no doubt I’d have tried to lie my way out of the situation and continued on the downward spiral my life was already in.

I served a two-year ban. My life was in ruins, but I felt relieved — at least I was free of all the deception and disgust. When I returned to the sport, I was determined to do everything in my power to prevent the next generation of riders having to make the decisions I’d made. Telling my story is my way of helping to prevent other athletes’ careers being poisoned as mine was.

The culture within cycling has changed enormously in the past 15 years: What was once a doping culture has become an antidoping culture, and the biggest races are today being won by clean riders. And yet there has been an elephant in the room during this period of transition: the T.U.E. culture. The World Anti-Doping Agency, and the international governing body of cycling, the U.C.I., have failed in their oversight of the list of drugs available with a T.U.E. and in their administration of the application process.

A T.U.E. should allow access to a performance-enhancing drug only if that drug is required for proven medical reasons. Then a T.U.E. should permit its use — but only out of competition. If any traces of the drug are found by in-competition testing, then that should result in a ban. For an athlete’s own well-being, it is better to face the fact of sickness or injury and withdraw from competition. And for the sport’s well-being, it is better to avoid a system open to abuse and exploitation.

In 1996, I believed myself incapable of cheating. My story illustrates only too well that none of us can be trusted always to do what is right. When the stakes are high, some will see it as sheer folly not to use every advantage available: Never mind if it’s unethical, as long as it’s not illegal. Just like our wider society, the sporting world needs effective laws and enforcement.