It’s time to engage in a fire-dance with the commissaires. You might get burned with a sanction, but it’s worth the risk because you may just get away with it. The secret is: Don’t push it. If you don’t make it too obvious, a blind eye will be turned. Go heavy, and you will be sanctioned. It’s a risky business. So good luck, everybody . . . and here we go.
Phase 1: The Magic Spanner
The mechanic is now back in the car. He’s had his full body moment in front of the cameras. Now it’s time to go hang just half of his fine figure out of the car’s right rear window.
The rider drifts over as the car pulls up alongside. Our mechanic, belly now folded over the open rear window frame, checks one of two things: the seat stem or the rear brakes. The giveaway is that if it was a front wheel puncture, there is no need to check the rear brakes or adjust for ‘rub’ on the rim. Anyway, out comes the magic spanner and an ‘adjust’ takes place while the driver of the car hits the accelerator. While the mechanic’s hands are on the bike, the cyclist is magically propelled forward at pace via automotive assistance, to regain time lost due to a racing incident.
• Giveaway: Front wheel change and a rear brake check.
• Top tip: Front wheel change? Adjust the saddle stem only.
Phase 2: The Sticky Bottle
Obviously, due in part to the stress of having a puncture, it is time for a drink. It is amazing how thirsty riders get on climbs! Any uphill section clearly generates a mighty thirst. Time to go to the left-hand side of the car and take a bottle. These bottles have an amazing magnetic quality. As soon as the riders’ hands touch them, the magnetism begins. Their grip, and those of the car drivers, resemble that of an electrician who’s got it wrong! They both hold on for dear life as the accelerator is hit again. Only when 55km/h (34mph) is reached on a 20% climb does the vice-like grip of the car driver release, leaving the rider free to cage the bottle. I’ve always pondered this law of cycling physics.
• Giveaway: On release, the rider immediately chucks the full bottle into a hedge.
• Top tip: Take at least one swig before launching it.
Phase 3: Drafting
‘He’s back in the cars,’ goes the commentary call. . . meaning he’s made it to the line of team vehicles sitting behind the peloton. Crisis nearly over. There is just one last piece of this dance of distraction with the race authorities: auto-assist. Get your arse as close to the bumper of every single car in the line of support vehicles as you can. Take them one by one as you move seamlessly towards the back of the pack of riders you were so unreasonably separated from through no fault of your own.
• Giveaway: Getting too close to a car and actually freewheeling.
• Top tip: Become animated. Hurl a few insults at the car in front of you as if the vehicle is actually holding you up. Use your arms in a rather flamboyant Italian way. This can help.
Black and White – or Grey?
Boundaries are strange things. They are markers of the acceptable. Going beyond these will draw scrutiny at best and a ban at worst. But boundaries are there to be approached and the movement of these lines can indeed come if – and only if – it is seen to benefit the sport. Clearly, taking a train is one thing and developing a cheeky skinsuit is entirely another. Strange that, for some, this all falls within a single category: cheating.
The fact is that some teams have enjoyed a great deal of success. This makes them a target for scrutiny, and a certain false equivalence pops up. Fans and journalists who support teams that regularly get beaten cry foul too readily. Cycling so often appears to be a sport full of malcontents. I wonder if this is because in this sport it could be said there are 175 ‘losers’ in a race and just one winner. That is a lot of bitterness right there.
Speaking to an Italian journalist, I once asked why the home fans are so forgiving of the likes of Marco Pantani and other alleged drugs cheats. He said the public view went like this: ‘So he took a few potions to light up the world for us. So what? He did it for us, not for himself.’ It’s a tainted view, of course. A boundary crossed, sometimes with tragic consequences.
Rules to combat cheating were established in 1905, as you have learned. Sixty years later, the first detailed anti-doping laws were adopted. Since then, those who run cycling have had to keep pace with a sport playing on the edge of the acceptable in terms of technology and medicine. Currently the Therapeutic Use Exemption (TUE) rules are proving almost impossible to fathom in terms of where the boundary lies. These rules allow certain drugs to be used for therapeutic reasons, such as for the treatment of asthma. There is a limit, though. Take too much, and you are going to be punished. But when and how severely? It seems nobody knows.
The situation means that teams are almost duty-bound to push the limits of what is acceptable. Some of these actions are allowed while others are rejected and punished. The fact remains that cycling is about winning, and to win you have to dance along a line that defines the acceptable. Step over it, and you are in trouble. But the search for the boundary goes on.
17
There is No Money!
A few years ago, a wealthy Russian businessman, one Oleg Tinkov, decided that he was going to change the financial model
