It was a dark, dark era in cycling.
Someone on NPR yesterday
1998
Richard Virenque is a popular rider for Team Festina, and a mountain climbing specialist. He is loved for his bold attacks, riding alone and heading uphill, far out in front of the pack.
Before the start of the 1998 Tour, his support team is crossing from Belgium to France. Customs officers find 250 bottles of EPO in the car. Steroid capsules. Perfluorocarbon. Painkillers. Amphetamines. Syringes.
His drugs have been confiscated. "What am I going to do now?" Virenque asks.
The director of the team calls up the newspapers. The car with the drugs wasn't really theirs, the director says. All of France laughs at this.
Police start making raids on teams. Television crews start hunting for syringes in trash cans. Newspapers start having to recount, about a stage, which riders had not make it to the starting line, because they were being held in jail.
The physician for U.S. Postal Service, a nobody team that nobody is paying attention to, panics and dumps tens of thousands of dollars worth of drugs down the toilet.
Coca-Cola panics too. The company that had started out selling cocaine in a bottle decides that being affiliated with the sport is bad for their reputation.
The riders, upset about all the police hanging around, and all the television crews, decides to ride as slowly as they can for a day. Presumably, to prepare for the performance, they had called up their suppliers for some downers. At any rate, halfway through the downer of a race, they decide to just sit on the ground.
The 1998 race is a public relations disaster. The sport is in danger. The riders decide that 1999 will be clean.
1999
Lance Armstrong is a popular rider for the U.S. Postal Service. Popular, to the full extent there could be such a thing as a popular American professional bicycle racer.
The prologue of the 1999 Tour is a sprint of an individual time trial. A brutal 4 miles as fast as you can. Lance Armstrong wins. But his drug test, the first in the new clean Tour, shows corticosteroids.
"What are we going to do?" Armstrong asks.
Lance Armstrong calls up the New York Times. And the New York Times prints up a story about a rash on Lance Armstrong's ass. All of France laughs at this. But America believes it.
The first mountain stage is 130 miles ending with an ascent to Sestrières. Lance Armstrong leaves bicycling's best climbers in his dust. The performance is phenomenal. The ride that made his career. His blood EPO level, it turns out later, was through the roof.
1999
Richard Virenque writes a book. I am not a doper, he says. He has never failed a drug test.
All of France laughs at this.
2000
Lance Armstrong writes a book. I am not a doper, he says. He has never failed a drug test.
America buys it.