Doping #46 Wij van Epo adviseren Epo

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One of the most memorable events that year was the Festina Doping Scandal at the Tour de France. The Festina incident set the typically calm and affable Dr. Celaya on edge, and on the day of the second time trial, in a panic over a possible police raid, Dr. Celaya flushed tens of thousands of dollars of performance enhancing drugs down the toilet of the team’s camper during the race.

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In the Vuelta towards the end of a tough day of riding Armstrong asked Vaughters and Vande Velde to return to the team car and retrieve a cortisone pill for him. The teammates obliged, however,Jonny Weltz told Vaughters he did not have any cortisone in the car. Thinking quickly, Weltzcame up with a placebo, whittling down an aspirin pill and wrapping it in tin foil to give to Armstrong.

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Armstrong, Vande Velde, Vaughters and Celaya stayed at a bed and breakfast for the1998 World Championships. Their bedrooms opened into a common area. One morning a UCI drug tester appeared and started setting up in the common area. This prompted Dr. Celaya to go outside to the car and retrieve a liter of saline which he put under his rain coat and smuggled right past the UCI tester and into Armstrong’s bedroom. Celaya closed the bedroomdoor and administered the saline to Armstrong to lower his hematocrit, without alerting the UCItester to their activities. Vaughters recalled that he and Dr. Celaya later “had a good laughabout how he had been able to smuggle in saline and administer it to Lance essentially under the UCI inspector’s nose.”

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At a race in Spain Hincapie had heard from Armstrong that Armstrong had just taken testosterone. Lance told Hincapie,” that he was feeling good and recovered that he had just taken some ‘oil.’” Hincapie testified, “[w]hen I heard that drug testing officials were at the hotel, I texted Lance to warn him to avoid the place. As a result, Lance dropped out of the race.”

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The adequacy of unannounced, no notice testing taking place in the sport of cycling remains a concern. For instance, at the 2010 Tour de France on two occasions the WADA independent observer (I.O.) team reported surveillance by cycling teams on the lookout for UCI testers. The WADA I.O. team reported they “could clearly see two persons watching the parking[lot] from their room windows half hidden behind the curtain as well as a team member seated infront of the hotel who immediately used his mobile phone when he saw the UCI [drug testing]team.”

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Also, the team staff was good at being able to predict when riders would be tested and seemed to have inside information about the testing. For instance, according to David Zabriskie,“Johan [Bruyneel] always seemed to know when drug testers were coming at races. His warning that ‘they’re coming tomorrow’ came on more than one occasion.”

Jonathan Vaughters said,“[t]he Postal Service staff, including Johan and the soigneurs seemed to have an outstanding early warning system regarding drug tests. We typically seemed to have an hour’s advance notice prior to tests. There was plenty of time in advance of tests to use saline to decrease our hematocrit level.”

At the 2009 Tour de France the AFLD conducted joint testing with UCI testers and recorded in their official report that “the Astana team, of which Lance Armstrong was a member, benefited from privileged information or timing advantages during doping controltests.” For instance, on one testing mission doping control testers were delayed by UCI officials for at least 30 minutes in testing the Astana team. On another occasion, appropriate confidentiality regarding the timing of intended testing was not maintained. These documented instances merely point out that the alleged lack of positive tests pointed to by Mr. Armstrong do not, for these reasons and many others, establish that he did not dope.

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Zabriskie also recalled an occasion when on the team bus during the Tour of Luxembourg the riders were told that police were at the team hotel and a team official advised that if any rider had any drugs in his bag that he should get rid of the drugs. After a rider’s drugs were buried in the woods, a team employee commented that, “those trees will be big in a few years.”

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In early 2003 David Zabriskie was 23 years old, a young man who had postponed a college education to see what he could make of himself in cycling. He must have felt fortunate to be on Lance Armstrong’s U.S. Postal Service Cycling Team. Zabriskie was, no doubt, happy to be walking to a meeting at a café in Girona, Spain with Team Director Johan Bruyneel, Team Doctor Luis del Moral and Zabriskie’s roommate at competitions, and a somewhat older cyclist named Michael Barry.

Zabriskie was away from home, a young man in an unfamiliar environment, he did not know Spanish and frequently felt lonely, one of the younger cyclists on a team of hardened professionals. However, on this day one would not have been surprised to find him expectant, hopeful. Zabriskie had recently shown success in the early season Four Days of Dunkirk, a four day stage race in which he had finished in a surprising fifth place.The result, accomplished from May 7-11, placed him in front of some well known racers at the time, men like Richard Virenque, Nicolas Jalabert and Laurent Brochard. Zabriskie had been warmly congratulated by the assistant team director and perhaps sensed that Bruyneel might have important plans for him.

Bruyneel was respected by Zabriskie whose father had died a few years before, his life shortened by drug addiction. Zabriskie had sought refuge in cycling. Long hard trainingrides were cathartic and provided an escape from the difficult home life associated with a parent with an addiction. He had vowed never to give in to the temptation to use, never to end uplike his father, furtively using drugs to feed his dependency and eroding his physical health. The group met at or near a café, and the conversation proceeded in English. Bruyneel got right to the point. He and del Moral had brought two injectable products for Zabriskie and Barry, something known as “recovery” and the banned oxygen booster, erythropoietin (known as “EPO”).

Zabriskie was shocked. This was the beginning of David’s third year on the team and he had not realized he would be required to dope. He realized, of course, that some cyclists in the peloton and likely some teammates fueled their success with banned substances. However, until now he had been largely shielded from the reality of drug use on the U.S. Postal Service Team. Zabriskie began to ask questions. He was fearful of the health implications of using EPO, and he had a slew of questions: would he be able to have children? Would it cause any physical changes? Would he grow larger ears? The questions continued. Bruyneel responded, “everyone is doing it.” Bruyneel assured that if EPO was dangerous no professional cyclists would be having kids. David was cornered. He had embraced cycling to escape a life seared by drugs and now he felt that he could not say no and stay in his mentor’s good graces. He looked to Barry for support but he did not find it. Barry’s mind was made up. Barry had decided to use EPO, and he reinforced Bruyneel’s opinions that EPO use was required for success in the peloton.

The group retired to Barry’s apartment where both David and Barry were injected with EPO by Dr. del Moral. Thus began a new stage in David Zabriskie’s cycling career – the doping stage. Cycling was no longer David’s refuge from drugs. When he went back to hisroom that night he cried.