doping

In my first instalment of “The Secret Pro” I talk about the off-season, pro contracts, Katusha’s license, and what it’s like to do my job with the sport under a cloud of doping suspicion…

The practice of enhancing performance through artificial means is as old as competitive sport itself. The first time blood doping came to my attention was after the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. I thought I knew the basics of how doping worked after hearing about it for all these years but got a fascinating insight […]

The action this week in cycling was in the court rooms, which only enriches news. US federal prosecutors closed a doping case against Lance Armstrong and a sporting court banned and stripped wins, including the 2010 Tour de France, from Alberto Contador. It sounds gloomy, and some of it is, but positive aspects often rise […]

I don’t know what has surprised me more over the past few days; Lance Armstrong’s case being shut down after almost two years of investigation or the news of Alberto Contador receiving a two year ban and having his 2010 Tour de France title stripped. To me, both of them seemed just as unlikely.

In an anticlimactic end to a twenty month Federal investigation into Lance Armstrong, the office of the federal prosecutors issued a quiet statement on the Friday before the Super Bowl stating that they have abandoned their investigation. Somewhere along the way, someone determined that this wasn’t a case worth pursuing. I’ve taken a couple days […]

What can I possibly say about Lance Armstrong that hasn’t been said before. Between 1999 and 2005 I was glued to the television watching him make history. I loved his domination and his celebrity profile. He was the one who motivated me to switch from mountain bike racing to road racing. Without Lance there would […]