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Searched for a link to this Sunday Times article. But could not find it.
From The Sunday Times
March 28, 2004
Cycling: Sad end to Roche's road
The unequivocal findings of an Italian judge have undermined the cyclist’s countless denials that he ever benefited from EPO
David Walsh
On the last Sunday of July, 1986, an epic Tour de France ended in Paris. Greg LeMond beat his teammate Bernard Hinault to become the first American to win the race and Stephen Roche, struggling with a troublesome knee and poor form, finished in 48th place, almost an hour and a half behind the winner. Not that anybody on the Champs Elysees that afternoon could have told of Roche’s travails.
Flitting between one television interview and another, Roche found a number of balloons in his path. With the swagger of a Maradona, he playfully scattered the balloons with his right foot until there was only one remaining. This one though was now behind him and, pirouetting gracefully, he torpedoed that last balloon into the air. And the point was undeniable: even on the bad days, Roche saw himself as a champion.
Which is why the 44-page report produced by Italian judge Franca Oliva and released last week will hurt so much. The judge’s verdict is unequivocal.
Roche was one of 33 athletes, mostly cyclists, who were given EPO in 1993. He claims he could not have been given it without his knowledge and did not knowingly take it. The evidence undermined his denials and Judge Oliva’s conclusions are not a surprise.
In Roche’s public view of the cycling world, it is not champions who use drugs but low wretches short on talent. He was scathing in his dismissal of Paul Kimmage when Kimmage produced his classic exposé on drugs in cycling, Rough Ride, and similarly disparaging about others who sought to highlight the sport’s pervasive doping culture. He took every generalised claim against the sport as a personal insult until, at last, the case against cycling wound its way into his career.
From the moment in early 2000 that the evidence came to light, it was clear Roche had a serious case to answer. At the time the Italian prosecutor Pierguido Soprani was investigating three sports doctors, Francesco Conconi, Ilario Casoni and Giovanni Grazzi, on suspicion of administering doping products, namely the blood- boosting drug erythropoietin . Even by the perverse standards of doctors who dope athletes, this was an extraordinary case.
At the time Conconi was considered a world leader in sports science and was a member of the International Olympic Committee and the Italian Olympic Committee . Casoni and Grazzi were two of his associates and Grazzi happened to be team doctor to Carrera, the team of Stephen Roche. Acting in conjunction with the IOC and CONI, Professor Conconi was working to devise a urine drug test for EPO, which was then becoming a major performance enhancer.
During the 1993 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Conconi gave a talk to IOC members that brought them up to date on his work to come up with an EPO test. He outlined how he had carried out controlled experiments on 23 amateur triathletes and athletes who, with their written consent, had been treated with EPO. Though progress had been made, Conconi admitted he had yet to come up with a definitive test.
That was 1993. Within four years, Soprani’s investigation into Conconi had begun. When Bologna police raided the University of Ferrara and seized Conconi’s files, they found what became known as “the EPO file”. This was the work with the 23 amateurs to find an EPO test. Except that there were no 23 amateurs. They were in fact elite professional athletes, six of whom were members of the Carrera cycling team. Roche was one of the six.
Not that a quick look at the EPO file would have told you that: Conconi gave aliases to his athlete collaborators, Roche was variously listed as Rocchi, Rocca, Roncati, Righi and Rossini. Speaking in a radio interview on Thursday, Roche claimed he did not know why these fictitious names were used. Judge Oliva had no difficulty working that out. But the use of bogus names was merely suspicious, the hard evidence was listed elsewhere in the EPO file.
Conconi listed the subject’s name, sex, sport and the date upon which the analysis was made. There was also a column that indicated whether or not the athlete was treated with EPO. On different occasions in relation to Roche, the answer was “S”, as in “Si”, Italian for yes. Conconi’s test tried to identify the rate of erythropoiesis and concentrated on the level of transferrin receptor. Anything over 3.1, suggested Conconi, would indicate the use of synthetic EPO. Roche is listed with a level of 5.5, the fifth-highest of the 23 athletes used in the study.
It is difficult to comprehend fully the scale of Conconi’s duplicity.
Funded by CONI and the IOC to come up with a test for EPO, he used that money to buy the drug, and then administered it to professional athletes for the purpose of performance enhancement. While being paid by the authorities to prevent doping, he was being paid by athletes for enabling them to dope.
The case against Conconi, Casoni and Grazzi was dropped because the investigation could not be completed within the five years allotted for such cases. In her report Judge Franca said while that was the correct decision legally, there was no doubt from the evidence that the three doctors were guilty of dispensing doping products. In her view the case against them was incontrovertible. Last week Roche said the doctors were acquitted but that was far from the case.
At the time that the seized Conconi files first became public, Roche offered this explanation for his involvement. “I met Conconi once, at the time I first joined the Carrera team, but after that I did all my blood tests for our team doctor, Giovanni Grazzi. I know Grazzi was based at the University of Ferrara and it’s possible that’s how I and teammates of mine have ended up in Conconi’s files. But Conconi cannot stand up and say I did this or I did that, because I never had anything to do with him.”
That explanation was unconvincing because it failed to deal with the highly suspicious use of aliases and the clear indications that Roche had been treated with EPO. Now the judge who presided over the case and had access to expert scientific evidence has come to the obvious conclusion: the three accused doctors were involved in a sophisticated doping scam.
In his insistence that he was not treated with EPO, Roche asked why he would use this drug in what was his last season in the peloton. It was, he claimed, his “goodbye” season, his long, leisurely goodbye to his peers and the sport. That does not tally with how well he rode in that final season; he finished 13th in the Tour de France and fourth in one of the race’s toughest mountain stages.
Working out the extent to which Judge Oliva’s report diminishes Roche’s reputation is far less clearcut than the actual verdict itself. Of course it damages him because an official judicial investigation concluded he used EPO. Yet it must also be stated that Roche’s greatest successes, his victories in the Giro d’Italia, Tour de France and World Championships came in 1987, when EPO did not exist.
Though one could easily contest Roche’s contention, expressed in a Thursday radio interview, that he has been “too modest at times”, one cannot argue with his belief that he was a very talented rider. He was a teenager when he won the Rás Tailteann but it was the cocky ease of the victory that was most impressive. RTE filmed the race and Roche performed for the cameras, waving to the crowds and doing interviews while the race was in progress.
We knew then he was a special talent, a view confirmed by his victory in the 1981 Paris to Nice race. He was then a first-year professional and people predicted he would be one of the big riders of his generation. That promise was gloriously realised in 1987 and, overall, Roche enjoyed a distinguished career.
Against that, he was involved in a sport that had a pervasive and dangerous doping culture. Many riders died in the early 1990s when few understood the risks of EPO abuse and even though some tried to speak openly about the culture, they were voices in the wilderness.
Roche’s reaction to the accusations against cycling was the traditional one: he denied its seriousness and often turned on those he saw as “nobodies who never won anything”.
What Roche couldn’t do was address cycling’s problem honestly because to do so would have diminished what he achieved. In that he is like many other cycling champions. This refusal might protect the memory of what they achieved but it lessens them as human beings. What is a victory in the Tour de France compared to the drug-related death of a former Tour winner, Marco Pantani, at age 34?
What are all the victories in the world when there are countless cyclists facing futures with certain health problems and a reduced life expectancy?
How could Roche read last week’s dreadful admissions of the Spanish rider Jesus Manzano and not feel that all those who have been in denial about cycling’s great problem have been significant contributors to the scourge? Manzano, who rode for the Kelme team, listed a catalogue of doping abuses that could so easily have cost him his life.
Cycling champions need to look beyond their own besmirched reputations.
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