UncleChainwhip said:
Certainly am wrong, as usual. Just continuing the flavor of that period. Hinault was so feared that the prevalent rumor was that he had French testers 'in his pocket'. To bolster this idea was that he raced largely in France. Truth was he was on a French team and the racing was more national then.
The same gist occurs with Jeanne Lon'gonads' in the present day. She had some good runs here in the States on road & track before finally getting busted for ephedrine during an Hour record. Still spanked Colorado pros last year in Durango!
Apology again,
stay friendly Les Bretons
Hinault's position on doping has never been very clear. Testing in his days was not always done in a very professional manner and positives were often quite suspicious. Examples : Merckx "positive" tests in Italy, Longo positive in Colorado for ephedrine - which you mention. Many nationalistic undertones.
Hinault's position (and many other pros) seems to have been that testing on the occasion of TdF criteriums should have been off limit : "we do one, sometimes two, races a day, no time to sleep and rest, don't come and bother us for just a bit of amphetamines".
In those days truckdrivers - for example - didn't have today's stringent restrictions on dayly rest and driving times, so that they were driving incredible number of hours when "necessary" and took maxiton (amphetamine) to stay awake. So, why should it be a big deal for cyclists at the time in the cycling season when they were reaping the profits of their TdF exploits?
As you imply, most of the interesting races in Hinault's time were in France and Belgium. Little incentive to go to other countries, but from the little I know of him, seeing how he relished racing in Colorado, he would have loved to race in Australia, Qatar, Japan, you name it...