Yesterday Dutch cyclist Marc Lotz had to come clean and let the world know he was taking doping (blood doping EPO) to improve his cycling… I was both surprised and stunned… Surprised because I would never have thought Lotz would use doping and stunned because I can’t believe he used EPO… How stupid must he be?!?! EPO has been strongly connected to cycling since the Tour de France of ‘98. And ever since there has been so many blood tests… and the one thing they seem to check for the most is EPO… so what was he thinking?!?! Besides that there was something I didn’t think about until I watched the sportnews later that evening… In my naive mind I thought or hoped it was just Lotz that did something stupid… Until old Dutch cyclist Maarten Ducrot gave his view in the sportnews… He simply stated the team Lotz was riding for had a team doctor, who monitors the riders very closely, so if Lotz was messing around with his blood, at least the team doctor must have known!
Bad… really bad… it feels like this could lead to yet another big doping thing… and the longer Lotz is quiet (he wants to be left alone now, and not talk to the press), the more speculation there will be… Are there more in the Quick-Step team that take something? Did he just started using it, or was he already using it when he was at the Rabobank team? What about the guys he trains with? They should have known…

Today the doping story continued when some stories from a new book from retired cyclist Philippe Gaumont were published. Gaumont, who was banned from the sport after admitting to using doping some years ago, now writes about all the doping stories in his former Cofidis team… Some were already known, like the classic story about Frank Vandenbroucke (who was caught using grow-hormones and EPO, but declared that the doping was not for him, but for his dog…), but it probably also contains new stories about the use of doping in the cycling sport.

Sad, because it really looked like the professional cycling was getting cleaner and cleaner the last couple of years… now it takes another big blow… What doesn’t help much is the default answer almost all cyclists give when they are asked if they use doping. It always is something like: “Well, I have never been caught.”

…

Well, at least I can finish the story on a high! I have been “clean” for almost 2 months now! Haven’t used any doping lately! :-) *hahaha* still don’t know for sure if my asthma medicine from my inhaler contains something illegal that is on any doping list, but apparently my increased level of fitness by all the cycling I have done makes me breath more easily! Now I just have to make sure I keep this level of fitness so I won’t ever have to speak those horrible words: “I have never been caught”… :-)

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 2nd, 2005 at 20:14 and is filed under News & media, Cycling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.