The Secret Race: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour De France: Doping, Cover-Ups, and Winning at All Costs: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour De France: Doping, Cover-Ups, and Winning at All Costs by Daniel Coyle, Tyler Hamilton Read Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Daniel Coyle, Tyler Hamilton
four other Americans—Scott Mercier, Darren Baker, Marty Jemison, and George Hincapie—would move to Girona. Our racing schedule would be more ambitious; we’d target the prestigious classic Liège–Bastogne–Liège, return to the Tour of Switzerland, and, if we did well enough, ride in our first Tour de France in July. Weisel’s goal was clear: we would prove that Postal belonged in Europe. We wouldn’t knock on the door anymore; we would kick the bastard off its hinges.
At some point in the party, I spotted a plate of chocolate chip cookies. I was conscious of my weight like any rider, but we had beentraining hard, and these were awfully good-looking cookies—crispy on the edges, a little underdone in the middle, just the way I like them. I couldn’t resist. I reached for one, munched it slowly—perfection. Then I took another. As I chewed, I got a strange feeling I was being watched. I looked up to see the new team doctor, Pedro Celaya, watching me closely from across the room, measuring the moment as surely as if he were taking my temperature. Pedro smiled at me, and slowly waggled a finger in a humorous but firm way: No no! I smiled back, pretending to hide the cookie under my shirt, and he laughed.
I liked Pedro immediately. Unlike Steffen, whom I’d found distant and touchy, Pedro was like your favorite uncle. He looked you in the eyes; he asked how you felt; he remembered little things. He was a slight, pleasant-looking man with an unruly, graying thatch of hair and a playful grin. To him, life seemed a great entertainment; he was always ready for a laugh. His English might have been imperfect, but he was a brilliant conversationalist because he seemed to sense what I was feeling before I felt it.
One of our first serious conversations had to do with my blood. Pedro explained that hematocrit was the percentage of blood that contains red blood cells. He explained a new UCI rule that required any rider whose hematocrit exceeded 50 percent—a probable sign of EPO use—to sit out fifteen days. Because there was as yet no EPO test, exceeding 50 percent was not considered doping; instead, UCI president Hein Verbruggen called it a health issue, terming the suspension “a hematocrit holiday.” †
So Pedro asked me if he could please draw a small amount ofblood, to check my hematocrit. He did, transferred the blood into a few narrow glass tubes, and inserted the tubes into a device the size of a toaster—a centrifuge. I heard a whirring sound; Pedro extracted the tubes and examined the hatchmark on the side.
“Not too bad,” he said. “You are 43.”
I remember being struck by Pedro’s wording: it wasn’t “You scored a 43” or “Your level is 43,” it was “You are 43.” Like I was a stock, and 43 was my price. Only later would I find out how accurate this really was.
But to be honest, I wasn’t paying a lot of attention at the time. I was more concerned with immediate things; the upcoming European season, planning, packing, training, seeing where I fit into the newly outfitted team. Scott Mercier was one of the older guys on the team, a former Olympian, and more savvy than I was at the time. I’ll let him describe his encounter with our new doctor.
SCOTT MERCIER: I’d never had a doctor ask me for blood before, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. But I knew that the only way to raise hematocrit was to take EPO, or get a transfusion. So [Celaya] takes me to his hotel room and we do the test. When he looks at my number, he starts shaking his head.
“Oooooh la la!” Pedro says. “You are 39. To be professional in Europe, you need to be 49, maybe 49.5.”
I understood what that meant; he had to be talking about EPO. But I decided to play dumb, to see what the doctor would say.
“How will I do that?” I ask, and Pedro smiles.
“Specialty vitamins,” he says. “Why don’t we talk about it later?”
When we got to Europe, I had my eyes open. I knew about EPO, I knew it had to be
At some point in the party, I spotted a plate of chocolate chip cookies. I was conscious of my weight like any rider, but we had beentraining hard, and these were awfully good-looking cookies—crispy on the edges, a little underdone in the middle, just the way I like them. I couldn’t resist. I reached for one, munched it slowly—perfection. Then I took another. As I chewed, I got a strange feeling I was being watched. I looked up to see the new team doctor, Pedro Celaya, watching me closely from across the room, measuring the moment as surely as if he were taking my temperature. Pedro smiled at me, and slowly waggled a finger in a humorous but firm way: No no! I smiled back, pretending to hide the cookie under my shirt, and he laughed.
I liked Pedro immediately. Unlike Steffen, whom I’d found distant and touchy, Pedro was like your favorite uncle. He looked you in the eyes; he asked how you felt; he remembered little things. He was a slight, pleasant-looking man with an unruly, graying thatch of hair and a playful grin. To him, life seemed a great entertainment; he was always ready for a laugh. His English might have been imperfect, but he was a brilliant conversationalist because he seemed to sense what I was feeling before I felt it.
One of our first serious conversations had to do with my blood. Pedro explained that hematocrit was the percentage of blood that contains red blood cells. He explained a new UCI rule that required any rider whose hematocrit exceeded 50 percent—a probable sign of EPO use—to sit out fifteen days. Because there was as yet no EPO test, exceeding 50 percent was not considered doping; instead, UCI president Hein Verbruggen called it a health issue, terming the suspension “a hematocrit holiday.” †
So Pedro asked me if he could please draw a small amount ofblood, to check my hematocrit. He did, transferred the blood into a few narrow glass tubes, and inserted the tubes into a device the size of a toaster—a centrifuge. I heard a whirring sound; Pedro extracted the tubes and examined the hatchmark on the side.
“Not too bad,” he said. “You are 43.”
I remember being struck by Pedro’s wording: it wasn’t “You scored a 43” or “Your level is 43,” it was “You are 43.” Like I was a stock, and 43 was my price. Only later would I find out how accurate this really was.
But to be honest, I wasn’t paying a lot of attention at the time. I was more concerned with immediate things; the upcoming European season, planning, packing, training, seeing where I fit into the newly outfitted team. Scott Mercier was one of the older guys on the team, a former Olympian, and more savvy than I was at the time. I’ll let him describe his encounter with our new doctor.
SCOTT MERCIER: I’d never had a doctor ask me for blood before, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. But I knew that the only way to raise hematocrit was to take EPO, or get a transfusion. So [Celaya] takes me to his hotel room and we do the test. When he looks at my number, he starts shaking his head.
“Oooooh la la!” Pedro says. “You are 39. To be professional in Europe, you need to be 49, maybe 49.5.”
I understood what that meant; he had to be talking about EPO. But I decided to play dumb, to see what the doctor would say.
“How will I do that?” I ask, and Pedro smiles.
“Specialty vitamins,” he says. “Why don’t we talk about it later?”
When we got to Europe, I had my eyes open. I knew about EPO, I knew it had to be
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