Cycling Independent Reform Commission report: Opening the can of worms

At this year’s track world championships, UCI president Brian Cookson said the Cycling Independent Reform Commission’s (CIRC) would reveal a lot of metaphorical worms wriggling from the can that was its upcoming report. Cookson, who was elected president in September 2013, campaigned on the promise that he would set up a process to investigate the doping practices in professional cycling’s past. In January 2014, he named Dick Marty the CIRC’s president. Marty is a Swiss politician and former state prosecutor. Ulrich Haas and Peter Nicholson were named vice-presidents, the former a specialist in anti-doping rules and arbitrator for the Court of Arbitration for Sport and the latter a specialist in criminal investigations in both national and international jurisdictions. Their report was presented to the UCI in late February. When it was released publicly Monday (at 1 a.m. CET), the following is what squirmed out.

90 per cent of today’s peloton is doping, or 20 per cent, it depends

From Section 1.4.3: What is the situation in respect of doping in cycling today?

One respected cycling professional felt that even today, 90 per cent of the peloton was doping, although he thought that there was little orchestrated team doping in the manner that teams had previously employed. Another put it at around 20 per cent. Many people simply stated they “didn’t know” who was clean and who was not. A lot of these discrepancies may be caused by the definition of doping being used by individuals.

Riders are worried about motor doping

While Fabian Cancellara’s 2010 Paris-Roubaix win and Ryder Hesjedal’s suspicious spinning wheel from Stage 7 of the 2014 Vuelta a España (both of which faced accusations of motor doping) weren’t mentioned in the report, technical cheating—using technology to get an unfair advantage—was cited as a growing concern.

“The commission was told of varying efforts to cheat the technical rules, including using motors in frames,” the document reads. “This particular issue was taken seriously, especially by top riders, and was not dismissed as being isolated. Other forms of cheating were explained, relating to frames construction, saddle specifications, and the wearing of illegal clothing and apparel. One interviewee alleged that another had heated a cycling track to elicit an
advantage to the home team, by enabling them to use more advantageous tires.”

It seems cheating via technology is not policed as well as its drug-fuelled counterpart. The impact of technical cheating appears to be greater now that the benefits of doping seem to be reduced. “The commission was told that today doping performance gains are perhaps around only 3 to 5 per cent, compared to 10 to 15 per cent 10 years ago. Other cumulative gains derived from technical cheating can make up the 3 per cent doping gains. By doping and by broader cheating, maximum gains can be made,” the report states.

Pros don’t want to ride gran fondos with doped up amateurs

It’s become easier for amateurs to dope. The practice has grown more prevalent among the non-professionals and masters.

Masters races were also said to have middle-aged businessmen winning on EPO, with some of them training as hard as professional riders and putting in comparable performances. Some professional riders explained that they no longer ride in the gran fondos because they were so competitive due to the number of riders doping.

The UCI worked to protect Lance Armstrong and even used his staff

In August 2005, L’Equipe published a story saying Lance Armstrong’s samples from the 1999 Tour de France showed that he had taken EPO. The UCI was going to investigate “how confidential information became public,” instead of the doping allegation. Later, WADA moved to start its own investigation of the matter. The UCI then announced that it had appointed former director of the Netherlands Centre for Doping Affairs Emile Vrijman to investigate. That announced came through a release that was crafted, in part, by Armstrong’s agent, Bill Stapleton.

Outwardly, the UCI said it would look into the findings within L’Equipe‘s article, which came out of tests done at the French laboratory of Châtenay-Malabry. The CIRC’s report says that the then newly elected UCI president Pat McQuaid sent a fax that informed Vrijman that “this investigation must clearly be restricted to the formal irregularities which have led to the revelations [in L’Equipe].”

Vrijman’s first report received two edits by Armstrong’s lawyer Mark Levinstein. Levinstein added sections to the report criticizing WADA and the credibility of the French lab. The report goes on to add that Stapleton later reassured Hein Verbruggen, the former UCI president who was still involved with the organization, that the report “is going after WADA as I know you (and we) want them to do and as they should.”

In spite of the special relationship between Armstrong and UCI, there is no evidence of corruption

The UCI and Armstrong worked together on many fronts. Armstrong had giving the organization notable financial contributions. According to the report, the UCI  asked Armstrong “directly in April 2008 to finance the ABP [athlete biological passport] with a payment of US$100,000 or indirectly to assist in securing sponsors to finance cycling events or UCI itself. UCI also accepted two donations from Lance Armstrong for the fight against doping.”

Money went from Armstrong to the UCI during his career as a cyclist and while doping suspicions and allegations against him started to appear. Still, the CIRC concludes there was no evidence of corruption at the UCI. The authors of the report didn’t find links between the $25,000 Armstrong paid the UCI (in May 2002) to help fight doping and his suspicious samples from the 2001 Tour de Suisse.

The biological passport can be gamed

One anti-doping achievement that the UCI has touted as a success its introduction the biological passport in 2008. It works on the principle of “where’s there’s smoke there’s fire.” The UCI records athletes’ various biomarkers. These records act as baselines against which later test results are compared. If testers find discrepancies against a cyclist’s biological passport, the findings could be an indication that the rider took banned substances. More targeted tests could follow, as could sanctions.

The biological passport was an improvement on the precious methods of testing, which either looked for the substances in the athlete, or compared biomarkers against accepted averages for the population. For example, in 1997, the UCI decided a 50 per cent haematocrit level was acceptable, which fell into the standard deviation of the normal population. Dopers, however, took this level as a licence to take EPO, while keeping their haematocrit below 50 per cent. Riders with naturally low haematocrit got the bigger performance boost. The biological passport was implemented to address the shortcomings of strategies such as the 50 per cent rule.

For the most part, the biological passport has worked. “Riders told the commission the ABP transformed the doping landscape, and made doping much harder,” the report reads. However, the biological passport is not without its shortcomings. Riders can take micro-doses of EPO that can provide a performance boost and avoid detection. They often pair this micro-dosing with the no-testing window, which runs from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. A dose late in the evening can run its course by morning. Also, there can be natural variations in a person’s blood parameters. Training at altitude and sleeping in an oxygen tent can alter levels. Riders have used these scenarios as excuses.

Whereabouts can be played, too

Teams can have a hard time keeping track of their riders’ exact routines. A cycling team isn’t a centralized unit like other sporting teams: multiple squads can be competing at different races at the same time. Riders often train solo or in groups that are based more on a geographic location than on a common employer. The teams are not necessarily cohesive units. “The commission has, for example, also been informed that one of the Astana riders, who tested positive in 2014, had been outside the team environment for two months and 11 days during an important preparation period, during which he was doping,” the report reads. The report later suggests that a strong team ethos, along with team doctors (as opposed to personal doctors), can help promote a “clean culture.”

The whereabouts system, in which riders keep the UCI up to date regarding their locations, did not start as a particularly strong program. Until 2004, riders didn’t have to report their whereabouts information. Thus, riders could easily avoid out-of-competition tests. In 2007, the UCI introduced an anti-doping administration and management system. Riders had to use this management system to update their whereabouts information. The UCI’s anti-doping unit had trouble managing the information, especially explanations for failing to file.  A bungled whereabouts issue that the CIRC report notes is that of Michael Rasmussen. The Danish rider was in the yellow jersey at the 2007 Tour de France, when he was suspended from the Danish national cycling team for whereabouts discrepancies. He said he was training in Mexico, but he was spotted in Italy. The UCI knew of these discrepancies and should have kept Rasmussen from participating in that year’s Tour. Instead, they simply gave him a warning. It seems the UCI was trying to avoid a doping headline by simply issuing the warning. The report indicates that post-2011, after improvements to the means of managing the whereabouts system, problems seem to have diminished. Still, riders can beat the system by changing locations often, doing so at the last minute and giving vague information.

Smuggle blood in your own circulatory system

The report revealed some grizzly details about blood transfusions. One rider carried previously frozen blood in his own circulatory system. “[He confirmed] that he would be given two to three units of blood in Madrid, and he would then travel to France where the units would be removed immediately, to be used later throughout the Tour,” the report reads.

Everybody was doing it, almost

According to a 1994 report on EPO use in Italian professional cycling, between 60 to 80 per cent of all riders were using EPO. From riders’ testimony to the CIRC, it is possible that this estimate may be modest for the peloton in that era, given that some put the percentage at 90+ per cent across the peloton.