Battle Scars Page 5
I was about to re-negotiate my contract later that year and I loved racing as a professional but it was hardcore. It was definitely different from the dream I’d pictured when I got on a plane to fly to Europe. I thought there’d be a lot more people around to support me, not just because at times I was sad and lonely, but to physically train with. Furthermore, I didn’t have a coach; I was left to my own devices. I was either at home, doing my race, or going home. Whatever led me to this moment—I don’t know if desperation is the right word—but I didn’t want to experience that degree of suffering in the Tour again. I wanted to be at the front, I wanted to win.
I was terrified about the possible side-effects on my health, I was freaking out and it went against all my morals; but still, I did it. Afterwards I remember feeling pretty flat. I was angry with myself but I didn’t just do it once; I did it over a ten-to twelve-day period leading into the start of the Tour de France. I used it every second day because I was too afraid to do it every day. I’m sure if I didn’t feel any improvement in my performance at the time, there would have been a placebo effect.
I don’t want to be a rider who says, ‘If you didn’t get on board with doping you’d get dropped,’ because that’s an easy excuse. Ultimately, you’ve got to be held responsible for what you put in your body and everyone has the right to say no. But I wasn’t strong enough and I gave in.
When I left home for the Tour de France, I put the EPO in my bag. It was pretty easy to hide one small vial but I was still scared. Buying it was challenging enough but travelling with it to Dublin for the start of the Tour was nerve-racking. It was like carrying a time-bomb; in my world what I’d done was as bad as it could get.
If I was scared just going to the 1998 Tour de France, I was terrified when word trickled through that police had stopped a rival team car at the Belgian border and found it loaded with doping products. I was freaking out inside but at the same time trying to stay focused on my own race. I was thinking, ‘Is this really happening? They’re going through cars?’ I definitely considered getting rid of the EPO in my bag, but what do you do? I was hiding it from my roommate and, to be honest, I didn’t want to touch the stuff. I didn’t want to risk getting it out, so I just left it there and the race started.
The 5.7 km prologue in Dublin was won by my teammate Chris Boardman, an amazing start for our team and the sponsors. But on Stage 2, while wearing the yellow jersey, Chris crashed out and was stretchered off in a neck brace. It was devastating for him and it left our team in tatters. We were promptly given orders to go on the attack.
The next day I found myself in a winning breakaway and managed a top-five finish to the 167 km stage from Roscoff to Lorient, now back in France. I followed attack after attack, which used up plenty of energy, and in the end I didn’t have the legs to contest the final sprint. I was now third on general classification and just three seconds behind leader Bo Hamburger, which was exciting but also devastating to be so close but so far. Did taking EPO before the Tour assist me that day? Probably yes, but to what extent, I can’t say. It wasn’t as if all of a sudden I just took off and left everyone behind in my wake. Although I had it with me at the race not even being three seconds off the yellow jersey tempted me to use it again because I was so scared of being caught, which in those days included going beyond the legal 50 per cent hematocrit limit. (Hematocrit is a measure of red blood cells in your system.) I didn’t have a doctor, and I figured that if you took it during the race, you’d be busted and gee, that would ruin your life, wouldn’t it?
Stage 4 was a 252 km, mostly flat, trek from Plouay to Cholet, the longest stage of that year’s Tour. As we approached one of the bonus sprints with Mario Cipollini, Erik Zabel and other legends in the bunch, all I needed was a couple of seconds over George Hincapie on the road to take the yellow jersey. I knew that I was quicker than George so I mustered up enough courage to go over to Cipollini—who I’d never spoken to in my life because he was this big, scary Italian God—and said, ‘Mario, is it okay if you don’t sprint, just let me win?’ He looked at me and said, ‘We’ll see.’ Right, that was one taken care of, now I had to find Zabel. So I rode up to him and said, ‘Erik, is it okay if you let me win the sprint? It’s for the yellow jersey, man.’ His reply was, ‘Okay, but as long as I get second,’ because he was still thinking about the green jersey and had a very mathematical process about how he went for it.
These guys were superstars of the sport and would have had no idea who I was, but I went around to every sprinter who was going for the green jersey and asked them not to sprint for the next time bonus so I could be in yellow. They were obviously feeling generous because as the race was all together, I ended up winning the sprint. Now all I had to do was get to the finish and I had the yellow jersey in the Tour de France. I collected two of the three six-second time bonuses that day and was the virtual race leader.
We were at the front of the group trying to stay out of trouble. Everything was looking pretty good and guys were coming up to say congratulations when Australian Neil Stephens rode up next to me and said, ‘Just be really careful in the final, it gets dodgy.’ For the rest of the stage I was crapping myself and, sure enough, with a kilometre and a half to go, disaster struck.
The rule used to be that if you crashed inside the last 1 km you got the same time as the winner. Now it’s 3 km. But this day we came around a bend with 1.5 km to go and there was a massive crash. Bang, and suddenly I’m in the barriers. I have no idea what happened but the next thing I knew I was on the ground and freaking out. I grabbed my bike, jumped on and Stevo appeared out of nowhere and yelled, ‘Jump on Stuey!’ and sprinted me towards the peloton. The bunch was blown to pieces but he towed me back to the front group and I got the yellow jersey pretty much thanks to Stevo that day. Not a very glamorous way to claim the biggest prize in world cycling—halfway through the race and after a crash in the final few kilometres—but it was a total adrenaline rush. In the space of a minute, my thinking went from, ‘Far out, I’ve got the jersey!’ to ‘I can’t lose it like this,’ and panicking. We were going so fast at the end that it was pure relief when we caught them before the finish.
I became the second Australian to wear the yellow jersey at the Tour de France and first since Phil Anderson in 1982. I was now the overall leader by eleven seconds, which meant absolute chaos after the stage. A good chaos, but it was very surreal getting chaperoned back to the podium, people everywhere and cameras in your face. One of my quotes to reporters after the race was ‘Who would have thought a freckly bastard like me would be wearing this beautiful jersey?’ I felt like I was inside a big washing machine of emotion, but no one knew that I was hiding a dark secret. Yes, I’d made a decision that went against my moral judgement, but I was so caught up in the circus of the Tour de France that everything seemed very surreal. I felt like I was in Disneyland but the dream didn’t last long.
As far as I can remember, back then it was the race leader, stage winner and a few random riders who were drug-tested. Walking into doping control and peeing into the cup straight after that stage was one of the scariest moments of my life. My hands were shaking as I didn’t know whether the EPO was still in my system. Things got even worse when I arrived back at the hotel and heard what had happened with the Festina team: guys were getting arrested and taken away by the police. Watching events unfold on French TV was the final straw. To say I was scared is an understatement; I was petrified. I was wearing the yellow jersey in the Tour de France, I had a vial of EPO in my bag and guys were getting arrested. What more of a slap across the face did I need? The price of being caught with this stuff was being taken away in handcuffs.
I know there are people who question whether I doped later in my career, but having witnessed the events of that Tour, I knew that to do it again I would have to be insane.
When my roommate went for a massage that night I got the EPO out of my bag, smashed it and flushed it down the toilet. Even though the damage was done, it was a
s if I was flushing away some of my sins. I swore to myself that I would never take EPO again.
With the yellow jersey hanging over a chair in my room, I put my inner turmoil aside and called my parents who were home in Adelaide where it was the early hours of the morning. In those days they didn’t broadcast the Tour de France on TV.
Stuart’s father Brian has kept a diary almost every day of his adult life. Documenting the night of 15 July 1998, when Stuart took the yellow jersey is the following entry:
Well, Stu rang us at 0230hrs to tell us it’s really true, he is the official leader of the Tour de France. He was so happy and reckoned he was going to sleep in the yellow jersey. It was so fantastic to hear him so happy and such a turnaround from his earlier phone call. Oh my God, the yellow jersey.
My family was obviously pretty excited about the news. Anyone else who called home that day was greeted with a new answering machine message saying: ‘Hello, you have reached the home of the yellow jersey’—which was Lesley’s idea.
Back at the Tour, I went to sleep that night feeling confused, questioning myself, ‘Did I need to do that? Surely I could have achieved that without EPO, I’m sure I could have.’ But it was too late. The circus continued the next morning when I walked outside the hotel to find thousands of people saying, ‘The maillot jaune, the maillot jaune!’ They didn’t even know who I was; all they wanted was to touch and smell the yellow jersey; that is the power of the biggest prize in cycling.
Now that we had the yellow jersey back, the team wanted to keep it for as long as possible and I certainly didn’t want to give it away. I managed to wear it for three days and it was so stressful. You have to go back to the podium after each stage when all your teammates are back on the bus eating and having a shower. Then they’re relaxing while you’re at doping control, doing interviews with local media, international media, your country’s media—it seems like an eternity.
The first day was Stage 5, a hectic 228.5 km from Cholet to Châteauroux, and I went down in a crash just before the first intermediate sprint at the 80 km mark. I had some pretty bad skin grazing on my arms and hip and battled on to finish fifteenth behind stage winner Mario Cipollini, but George Hincapie had cut my lead from eleven to seven seconds.
Stage 6 was 204 km from La Châtre to Brive-la-Gaillard which was easier to negotiate and I still led overnight, but not without an early fright after missing the start because I was so caught up in the emotion of wearing the yellow jersey that I got carried away signing autographs before the stage. Eventually I had to hand the yellow jersey to Jan Ullrich on the Stage 7 individual time-trial. I rode one of the best time-trials of my life in super-hot weather and on tiny, hilly farm roads but I did the jersey relatively proud to finish fifteenth.
By then, I thought the highs of my Tour de France were over but another day of reckoning came on Stage 14 when I found myself in another breakaway on a hilly 186.5 km stage from Valréas to Grenoble. I just held on over the last climb of the day and descended like mad, trying to drop a few of the guys coming into the finish. Then suddenly, a few of them attacked with 2 to 3 km to go and a couple of other guys just sat up as if to say they were done and couldn’t be bothered chasing. I said, ‘What are you guys doing, we’ve been out here for 180 km and now you’re going to stop?’ That was the win right there as two guys kept riding away from us in the breakaway. So I got everyone organised and said, ‘Come on, come on,’ trying to get them to believe that there was still an opportunity because no one wants to come third. This was the chance for a stage victory at the Tour de France—something I had never experienced despite being the race leader for three days the week before.
The guys with me started to realise that we might actually catch them and with under 1 km to go we did. The finish line got closer and by now there was no worrying about anyone else, this stage was mine. I timed my sprint, gave it absolutely everything and no one could go past me. It was an unbelievable feeling, I had just won a stage of the Tour de France! I can’t say whether the EPO still had an effect, but I cleared the doping controls so who knows. More podiums, more flowers, more interviews, more cameras and more madness. I was back in the washing machine of emotion, still not really knowing what to think.
Celebrations were fairly restrained that night, a glass of champagne was all we were allowed and, surprisingly, that was all I wanted because the next day we were back in the mountains swinging for our lives again. It was a punch in the head that brought a reality-check—one day you’re the king of the castle, the next day you’re just another rider getting dropped. That’s the emotion of the Tour and for me, riding it for just the second time having worn the yellow jersey and won a stage in the first two weeks, it was even more pronounced.
While the race continued, so did police investigations into doping in the peloton; in fact, the drama seemed to engulf the Tour. By now the Festina team had been kicked off the race and three days after my stage win in Grenoble, things came to a head.
On 29 July we were on the road for Stage 17, on the way from Albertville to Aix-les-Bains, when all of a sudden the peloton slowed down and guys hopped off their bikes and sat on the road. It was a sit-down protest against the treatment of the riders at Dutch team TVM who were being investigated. I had no idea what was going on. Then the next minute we were back on our bikes riding up the mountain again when word came through the peloton that they’d neutralised the stage.
It was a very weird time for cycling. Riders were protesting, spectators were booing us and teams were talking of abandoning the Tour. It was a perfect illustration of cycling’s bubble: some of the protesting riders were doping but they dealt with the stress by going on the offensive. As for me: I knew what I’d done, but I just wanted to keep out of it. Looking back on it now, the whole situation was farcical.
With so many points in breakaways I ended up finishing second in the green jersey when we got to Paris four days later. My Tour de France was over and as successful as it was, I was relieved it had finished. I had cheated, I had got away with it by the skin of my teeth and I wanted to erase it from my mind. I didn’t ever want to tell anyone I’d done it, I definitely wasn’t proud of it, it was the worst decision I’d made in my life and I didn’t ever want to be in that situation again.
I realise that not everyone is going to believe me because in cycling so many people have lied for so long that people are sceptical. I’m never going to change their judgement. All I can say is that the battle I fought with myself was far bigger than any bike race could ever be.
Some riders who cheated their entire careers most likely needed to have some serious back-up because a lot of people are involved. I was very fortunate to have great directors and support from people who didn’t advocate doping so I was never tempted to go down that path again. I certainly wasn’t prepared to repeat the personal hell I’d experienced.
The 1998 Tour de France sky-rocketed me to the top but our sport went into the darkest moments of its history. I was more than happy to make it to Paris so I could start again and focus on something else.
At the Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur, the Aussie team helped my good mate Jay Sweet win the road race. I was hoping to join him with a gold medal around my neck after the time-trial but it didn’t go to plan. I went off in the first wave because it was super-hot, 90 per cent humidity, along with guys from countries I’d never even heard of wearing sneakers and on road bikes, but I was totally focused.
I was on the limit every pedal-stroke so it wasn’t all that surprising when, coming downhill way too fast, I misjudged a corner, the front wheel went and I hit the deck, ripping my left side to pieces. I snapped my bike, blood was streaming out of me and I’ve still got the scars up my leg. I quickly got a road bike and finished the last 20 km in a world of pain, crossed the finish line and went straight to the medical centre. Through a blur of pain-killers I heard people saying, ‘You’ve still got the fastest time.’ Then the second wave went through and they said, ‘Still got th
e fastest time.’ I almost wanted someone to hurry up and smash it. The winner, Canadian Eric Wohlberg, ended up beating me by ten seconds but I was still pleased with my efforts when I headed home.
At that time, cycling in Australia wasn’t as mainstream as it is now, and my achievements at the Tour de France provided a massive boost for the sport. I attracted a lot of media attention in Adelaide and there were accolades, congratulations and pats on the back. And yes, I happily took those pats on the back despite what I’d done. I still carried my dark secret; I buried it deep in my mind and hoped it would go away.
Wearing the yellow jersey in the 1998 Tour de France. (© Graham Watson)
When news broke that the inaugural Tour Down Under would be held in January 1999, I was straight on the phone to Roger Legeay trying to convince him to bring our team to Adelaide. Back then it wasn’t a World Tour race but I’d known the race director, Mick Turtur, since I was a teenager and really wanted to be a part of it. But for a European team to come to Australia was basically unheard of at that time, and I think if you ask Roger now, it was probably more out of respect to me that he not only sent our team down under but he came as well.
It was the start of a new season but the events of the previous year weren’t so easily forgotten. I’d played with fire, almost got my fingers burnt, and I was angry at myself for going down that path in the first place. I knew deep down that I could get results without resorting to doping so I was desperate to be fit for the Tour Down Under. It was a dream come true to have a race in my own backyard and I knew the roads around Adelaide like the back of my hand.
The Tour Down Under was a really good way for me to kick off the season, of equal importance to me psychologically as it was physically. December and January were the building blocks of my season. I would start training in November and, with my coach/trainer Leigh Bryan, I’d go to the AIS in Adelaide and use the gym facilities for the whole month and ride every second day. In the early years I’d link up with Luke Roberts, Jay Sweet and his brother Corey and we’d head out into the hills and rip four or five hours which had me in great shape for not only the national championships but for the Tour Down Under.