So as some of you probably know, I'm from the Netherlands. More specifically, I'm from Deurne, a small village no one's heard of apart from girls who are into horses (there's some sort of big horse training school there) and Dutch pro cyclists. The reason the pros know about Deurne is because of the GP who lived a few doors down from my parents: Dr Peter Janssen, blood doping pioneer and the Netherlands' biggest doping doctor.
I knew him as a GP, but when I started watching lots of cycling my dad pointed out to me that Dr Janssen used to be PDM's doping doctor. Even in the late 90s that was common knowledge. He told me this as a few of the Dutch cyclists we saw on TV on the weekend would show up on our street a few days later. I think it was around '99/'00 that I worked out that they would show up on Thursday evenings during the classics season (usually just one or two of them), and a lot of more them in the lead up to stage races.
He was an official team doctor, and he ran a sports clinic in local hospital, so I didn't think anything of it. I was still young and naive and believed doping was a stupid thing people used to do and I was way too excited to actually see these guys (mostly the Bankgiroloterij team at the time) in real life to put two and two together. It wasn't until a few years later, around the time he was at Vacansoleil and a few riders tested positive, that things really started to click.
It was pretty disillusioning to realise why all those riders I'd been excited about seeing had been just down the road. And just how often they'd been there - doping wasn't a one time mistake, as some riders were making out in their public apologies, it was a well planned programme.
What I didn't put together before (or didn't want to put together), is that I saw Leontien van Moorsel visit his surgery as well. She was my absolute hero at the time. I'd seen her win the world TT title in 1998 in Valkenburg and 4 Olympic medals in Sydney in 2000. So when I was out with my dad walking our dog in early 2001 (on a non-doping evening, so I didn't link her to Dr Janssen) and saw Leontien just walking down the street, I was very excited. I got to meet her very briefly and awkwardly before she and her husband got back into the car and drove off. I can remember the meeting very well as I thought it was awesome, and because my dad, who's a cycling fan as well, seemed weirdly cold to Leontien. I now get he was just a lot smarter than me.
She's had doping accusations hurled at her before, but I didn't want to believe she would dope ("it's different in women's cycling", "they don't even earn enough to afford to dope" etc). Unfortunately, I recognise way too many details in this article to doubt the man. So I'm starting this weekend with another fallen hero
.
To end on a positive note: I feel a lot better about the time I was walking our dog and she had a bout of horribly smelly explosive diarrhoea all over Dr Janssen's front yard.
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