44 45

SpaniSh bull

For now, whether Alberto ContAdor is A ChAmpion or A FrAud, honourAble or A CheAt,

is For you to deCide … the uCi sure hAsn’t.

B y J o n A t h A n h o r n

Two years ago, in a section of the Swiss Alps, where well-to-do Europeans ski away their winters, a bug-eyed, canary-breeding Spaniard with a pronounced scar from ear to

ear turned in one of the most incredible athletic feats of our time. Behind him, some of the best endurance athletes in the world – including the man judged by many to be the best cyclist of all time, together with Australia’s best-ever shot at a Tour de France title – were made to look like they were stuck in mud.

Several minutes later – and I can testify to this because I was standing metres away, struggling to breathe-in the thin air – Alberto Contador wasn’t even puffing. He sat perched on his bike, his posture perfect, chatting amiably to his support crew, a big grin on his face and – if you believe the naysayers – a decade’s worth of secrets lurking beneath.

Sporting performances that at first appear to be beyond the realms of what human beings are capable of aren’t unusual. On a balmy Beijing night in 2008, a lanky and

lairy Jamaican ran significantly faster than anyone before him while skylarking around and admiring himself on the stadium’s big screen. Earlier this year, a Kenyan called Geoffrey Mutai ran 2:03:02 for a marathon in Boston, which even a decade ago would’ve been considered science fiction. The subsequent outcry pertained not to whether he was juiced to the eyeballs, but whether the time constituted a genuine world record, given that it was run on a downhill slope and with a sweet tailwind. Cycling is rarely afforded the same luxury – perhaps with good reason.

America’s Greg LeMond witnessed Contador’s incredible climb up Verbier and smelt a rat. In the 1980s, the three-time Tour de France winner was accidently shot in the back with 40 pellets by his brother-in-law while hunting (he was hiding in the bushes and thought LeMond was a deer). He ended up making a successful comeback in the lap of France and is considered one of the few big-name cyclists of his generation to ride clean. Champions in all sports (anyone for cricket?) are often inclined to pot the younger generations, but LeMond

is especially vocal with his scepticism, particularly when it comes to his fellow three-time winner. “How to explain such a performance?” he wrote in his column in the aptly named French newspaper Le Monde the day following the stage. “He would have required a VO2 max of 99.5 mil to produce that effort. To my knowledge, that is a figure that has never been achieved by any athlete in any sport. It is like a Mercedes sedan winning on a Formula One circuit. It would be interesting to know what’s under the hood.” When repeatedly pressed about LeMond’s allegations during subsequent press conferences, Contador would simply eyeball the journalist, take a swig from his water bottle and offer a curt “no comment”. And the circus would move on.

The story of what is under Contador’s hood is in many ways the story of modern cycling itself. It’s the story of competing interests, big bucks, political intrigues, language barriers, cones of silence, unwritten rules, shady doctors and suitcases stuffed with cash. It’s the story of superhumanly fit young men, often from dirt-poor backgrounds, who are plucked from obscurity, groomed

and moulded into champions. Like Lance Armstrong, Marco Pantani, Floyd Landis and pretty much anyone who’s anyone in cycling, Contador’s story is about dogged persistence, sacrifice and flashes of brilliance. But like them, the story is punctuated by asterisks and question marks.

When cycling nuts log on to internet forums and pen impassioned essays on Contador, no one ever questions his freakish talent. His effortless cadence, his vertical ascending prowess and his punch and power have perhaps never been matched. His ability to knock out a race-winning time trial 24 hours after a punishing day in the mountains is the reason he’d racked up three Tour de France titles by the age of 27.

Indeed, if he’d kept better company, he’d probably have five titles by now. He sat out the 2006 event in the wake of the Operation Puerto scandal (see Overruled), but snared the win he deserved the following year, albeit after leader Michael Rasmussen was booted out of the race. Cadel Evans fans may take issue, but Contador almost certainly would’ve won in 2008 if not for the fact that his Astana team had been barred from the race. As if to say “stuff you”, Contador went out and won the ’08 Giro d’Italia (a feat he repeated in May this year) and the Vuelta a Espana (Tour of Spain) in blistering style, becoming one of only five men to win three Grand Tours, and the first for a quarter of

century. His freakish 20 minutes on Verbier and brilliant time trialling shored up the 2009 title and he backed it up as an odds-on favourite last year, while the likes of Armstrong and Evans paddled. In a country that currently boasts the world’s best tennis player and the world’s best football team, he’s a national sporting icon.

But what sort of man is he? Unflappable, affable and unpretentious are adjectives commonly bestowed upon him by those who know him on a superficial level, maybe by shoving a microphone in front of him every now or then or occasionally f lanking him on a team bus. But perhaps because so much gets lost in translation, or perhaps because of his reluctance to offer much in interviews, “El Pistolero” remains pretty much unknowable.

Armstrong, for what it’s worth, doesn’t like him. The pair cultivated a partnership of sorts at the 2009 Tour but the seven-time winner’s slightly subservient role was never going to have legs. The aftermath was characterised by petty sniping via social media and the Texan finally let loose in an interview with Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf, where he said, “Contador carries on like he’s the King Of Spain.” … “I’m impressed by the athlete, but it stops there for me.” … “Contador is totally different from me.” … “He knows no better. He is a Spanish guy who is always in the same pueblo [district]. He has his friends, his family, the street where he grew up, his country, }

“I wasn’t surprised when you see it’s Spain,” said UCI chief Pat McQuaid following the decision to overturn Alberto Contador’s ban. He wasn’t alone. Spanish sport has been on the nose ever since the splendidly named Dr Eufemiano Fuentes, a gynaecologist cum team doctor, was found to have masterminded one of sport’s more elaborate doping networks. In 2006, the Operation Puerto investigation implicated some of the world’s best cyclists, together with footballers and tennis players. Charges against Contador were eventually dropped by Spanish courts and unlike the Germans and Italians, Spanish authorities didn’t issue any bans against their riders netted in the police investigation. To this day, there is yet to be a civil court doping case against a local athlete in a Spanish court.

Endurance athletes insist that little has changed. Australia’s Chris McCormack, probably the world’s greatest male triathlete, has spent a considerable time training in Spain and told the Herald Sun last year. “You walk into a pharmacy and it’s right there. If you ride a bike, you get asked if you need ‘some medicine’.”

As for Dr Fuentes (below), he is still making noise. “If I would talk, the Spanish football team would be stripped of the 2010 World Cup,” was his latest gem.

What’S under Contador’S hood iS the Story of modern CyCling.

Contador – barely puffing – crosses the Verbier finish line at the ’09 Tour.

“El Pistolero” leads Andy Schleck up Tourmalet at last year’s Tour.

46 47Technology. Fit. Style. Choice.

Overruled

his people. A great athlete like him must employ people who support him and have patience with him. But he is surrounded by ‘yes’ men.”

Certainly it’s hard to glean much about a man courtesy of staccato Spanglish grabs hurriedly fired off after a day‘s slog in the Pyrenees. But when Contador gave a rare extended interview to Spanish cycling journalist Carlos Arribas several years ago, we got some sort of window into what makes him tick and how ruthless he is when he dons a helmet. “I like putting on good shows,” he said. “I attack whenever I can. I attack without looking back as soon as the climb starts. When I look at the faces of those who are with me and I see suffering, when I see their revealing gaze behind dark glasses, then I attack. I attack to break them, to break away on my own.”

We learnt that despite the shiny teeth, the bike bling and the preposterous time trial kit that conjures up images of Ronald McDonald on wheels, he’s a decidedly blue-collar athlete. “Alberto had nothing,” one of his early mentors, Javier Fernandez, told Arribas. “His parents couldn’t even go with him to races because they had to stay with his younger brother, Raul, who has suffered from brain damage since he was a child.”

And we learnt more about the accident

in 2004 that almost killed him and, in many ways, shaped both the athlete and the man. Everyone always harks back to Armstrong’s battle with cancer, but Contador’s injury during the Vuelta a Asturious was every bit as life-threatening, and his comeback, which took hold at the Tour Down Under the following year, was every bit as inspiring.

On a steep and severe descent, Contador started shaking and convulsing and fell off his bike at high speed. The race doctor quickly administered a shot of Valium, which probably saved his life. The result was neurosurgery, metal plates inserted in his head, an enforced layoff and a nasty scar for life. The more cynical tried to tie his accident in with doping, but doctors confirmed he had a congenital brain condition, cerebral cavernoma. “Since then,” Contador has revealed, “when anything happens to me, I compare it with that and laugh.”

What he hints at is the persistent innuendo and conspiracy theories that have dogged him ever since he was the protegee of Manuel ”Manolo” Saiz, a roly-poly figure who revolutionised the way cyclists are trained. He was a pioneer in the use of technology such as heart rate monitors and – ominously – was one of the first team directors to play a hands-on role in matters medical. When he became embroiled in

the Festina shemozzle of 1998, he withdrew his riders, saying, “I have stuffed a finger up the Tour’s arse.” His credibility went out the window with Operation Puerto, where he was busted with a suitcase full of cash in a Madrid cafe while having a coffee with the notorious Dr Fuentes. But his influence on Contador cannot be underestimated. He discovered him, nurtured him and turned him into a superstar. And he turned him into a figure of distrust.

There has always been dirt on Contador. A starring role in the whitewash that was Operation Puerto. A blood bag marked “AC” that he swears wasn’t his. Following his 2009 Tour victory, French officials investigated the discovery of equipment such as syringes, perfusions and anti-hypertension medications in the Astana team but nothing ever came of it. And most recently, he tested positive to a drug that few of us can pronounce, let alone get our heads around. The ensuing pantomime, starring everyone from prime ministers to anonymous bloggers, muddied the name of not only Contador, but cycling’s governing body and Spanish sport in general.

In September last year, amidst all sorts of brouhaha, Contador gave a press conference confirming that he’d tested positive to clenbuterol during July’s Tour. }

Contador’S CoW WaS noWhere to be found. ad

Pretty in yellow: Contador on the Champs Elysees at last year’s Tour.

48 Established in Belgium. 1919.

The drug is most commonly administered to horses to treat breathing problems. In humans, it enhances the ratio of lean meat to fat. The suggestion was that it could’ve been used in pre-Tour training and then returned to his bloodstream via an illegal transfusion. Anonymous sources also claimed the samples contained plasticisers, which leach into the blood via plastic bags, a telltale sign of illicit blood transfusions. But a test for the said offence isn’t yet validated by WADA (World Anti-Doping Agency) and according to many, the Spaniard dodged a bullet.

An incredulous Contador claimed he was the victim of contaminated meat. There are documented, albeit rare, cases of athletes proving the connection between contaminated meat and a positive test for clenbuterol. The closest precedent was an international table tennis player who was cleared of an offence after he successfully unearthed evidence of tainted food. Suffice to say, a cyclist who climbs mountains in the Pyrenees has a greater predisposition towards the dark side of performance-enhancing drugs than a ping-pong player who whacks backhand winners down the table. And accordingly, the onus on the cyclist to prove his innocence is considerably higher.

Contador, like every other cyclist in the peloton who tests positive to a banned substance, operates under “strict liability”,

or “guilty until proven innocent”. As Article 296 of the UCI’s code states: “The riders must also establish how the prohibited substance entered the body.” Consequently, cyclists go to extreme levels to ensure clean food supplies. During every stage, they’re offered food from spectators and they always refuse. A team dinner is a study in paranoia. Whatever the case, Contador’s cow was nowhere to be found, no proof was forthcoming and he was strapped with a two-year ban, the standard sentence for a first offence.

According to Canadian anti-doping guru Christiane Ayotte, even the most miniscule amount of clenbuterol is often evidence of doping. The 50 picograms (trillionth of a gram) found in Contador’s system are still potent and pack a considerable punch. The fact the side effects of such an infinitesimal amount include headaches, heart palpitations and high blood pressure speaks for itself. “You’ll never find a ton of it because the doses are really small,” Ayotte said at a seminar in Canada. “It’s used in sports where they need to cut weight. Just because it’s small doesn’t mean it’s not doping. This is just the dopers adjusting, or misadjusting, to the testing.”

Contador came out swinging. “This is horrific,” he said. “It’s almost got to the point where they say that when they operated on me, they touched my brain and turned me

into a superman. I have made some 500 controls in my life that have been in my house, on birthdays, they have taken me out of the cinema. I accepted this because I always trusted this test system, but I do not believe in it.”

Some of the heaviest of hitters were in his corner and pedalling hard for him. Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero tweeted, “There’s no legal reason to justify sanctioning Contador.” The leader of the opposition and the president of the Spanish High Court also offered their unequivocal support. Most importantly, his own federation backed him and after initially proposing a one-year ban, eventually absolved him and overturned the two- year sentence. “I’ve known him since he was a boy,” said the president of the Spanish Cycling Federation (RFEC), Juan Carlos Castrano. “I can’t help but have sympathy with Alberto Contador. I would like things

to turn out well.”Pat McQuaid is an Irishman who lives in

Switzerland and bemoans the lack of pubs and social life. As the head of the UCI, he has significant political clout and is in many ways the eyes and ears of cycling. To him, the RFEC’s backflip flew in the face of everything the UCI represents. “It’s up to the sport to police itself,” he said.

“I don’t think it should be interfered with by politicians who don’t know the full facts of cases, making statements which are purely political statements.”

This is where things get murky. To get a handle on the Contador case and the sport of cycling as a whole, the UCI itself warrants close attention. The sport’s governing body is both policeman and promoter, a political body running a commercial enterprise. McQuaid is a man who once accepted a $100,000 donation from Armstrong, the }

“the truth in doping CaSeS haS alWayS been brought in by CourageouS outSiderS.”

Even in Spain, a country of sporting giants, Contador is a superstar.

The hero, or just one more villain?

UCI boss Pat McQuaid.

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sport’s most controversial figure (the money didn’t materialise for three years) and his detractors claim that the core of the Contador case comes down not to dodgy chemists or corrupt politicians, but to the UCI itself.

Travis Tygart is probably the most important man in the world when it comes to the war on performance-enhancing drugs. As head of the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), he’s wary of commenting on individual cases, particularly Contador’s, but prefers to express his concerns with a system he believes is inherently f lawed. And the UCI is very much in his sights. “We know sport cannot both police and promote itself,” he tells Inside Sport. “It’s vitally important to have an independent authority conduct testing to eliminate the inherent conflicts of

interest that otherwise exist. This is why we and WADA were established and we firmly believe this is the most effective model to rid the potential conflict of an organising body trying to self-police.”

Professor Werner Franke isn’t exactly enamoured with the UCI either. And even less so with Contador. Any man married to a former East German shot-putter and discus thrower would know a thing or two about performance-enhancing drugs. Indeed, the septuagenarian was instrumental in uncovering the systematic use of doping by East German athletes. When it comes to the fight against drugs, the professor is a legend. He’s been sued 20 times and won them all. And he thinks Contador is a cheat. He called the Spaniard’s 2007 tour triumph “the greatest fraud in the history of sport”, and he still claims to possess documents that prove his guilt in the Operation Puerto case. When Inside Sport finally tracked him down and rang him up for a chat, he put the beaker down, opened up his shoulders and let f ly. “The UCI always has been – and apparently still is – part of the criminal system,” he says. “I could quote former WADA head Richard Pound, who insulted the UCI in the most

brutal way. (“The image of your sport and its f lagship event is in the toilet,” Pound said in 2006. “You’ve got to do something about it or the risk is that your sport will be ignored by everybody, marginalised by others and it won’t be a sport any more.”)

“Yet the UCI did not go against them in a court of law. I wonder why?”

The way Franke sees it, cycling is a nest of vipers and everyone involved has their own competing interest. Even the people who commentate and report on cycling are guilty, he says, if only of putting their heads in the sand. He believes they are reluctant to speak out against a sport that puts food on their table. “Cycling journalists are – for the most part – fans and aficionados and they do not seek or talk up or write the truth. The truth in doping cases has always been brought in by courageous outsiders.”

Whether you believe the German in his labcoat or the Spaniard in his lycra, one can’t deny that Contador’s credibility continues to be sullied. Here’s how US cable channel Universal Sports promoted this year’s Giro d’Italia, complete with slow-motion close-ups of Contador: “Is he a champion or a fraud? Honourable or a cheat? All eyes are on him. You decide.”

This is how cycling is promoted now. Meanwhile Contador, whose case is currently under review by the Court Of Arbitration For Sport, continues to race and continues to shine. A suspended Contador wouldn’t quite be as calamitous for cycling as an indicted Armstrong relinquishing his seven titles, but it would be a disaster. It would be a disaster for the cycling purists, for those who steadfastly defend the sport on internet forums, for the sponsors who

make squillions on the back of the sport, for the journalists and commentators who zip around France for three weeks following the sport they love. But it would be a tonic for those who believe in justice.

“It takes courage to stand up and speak out against a corrupt culture,” says Tygart. “It’s not easy to do, whether that culture exists in sport, law or business. We want young athletes to know they don’t have to take dangerous drugs or cheat to win. We are working hard to ensure that future generations of athletes can participate in sport and know that their fellow athletes are clean and that the person on top of the podium has achieved their success because of dedication alone.”

Inside Sport asked Professor Franke what he would say to a young cycling fan who desperately wants to believe that heroes like Armstrong and Contador have achieved their success because of dedication alone. True to form, he was blunt. “You have to remain cynical,” he snapped. “It’s the only way to survive in mental health.”

Indeed, there comes a time – whether you hop out of bed at 3am to switch on the SBS cycling coverage or camp on the side of a French mountain in the pouring rain for two days – where you have to ask yourself whether this is genuine. The sport, the process and the man himself are all complex, in too deep and decidedly on the nose. Contador is the hot favourite for this year’s Tour and watching him hop out of his saddle and blow a peloton to shreds remains one of sport’s great sights. As the ad says, the choice is yours. But there’s a stench there that grows ever more pungent, a stink that makes the choice a no-brainer. n

the StenCh groWS ever more pungent

Fans want to believe Contador’s clean, but are they deluding themselves?

Professor Werner Franke: “You have to remain cynical.”

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