Ketones
Twenty-years ago, in 1999, I was on my way to the Tour with high expectations. I’d been part of the ESPN TV crew since 1992 yet had never been on-camera, rather serving as a “shadow talent” for the host Adrian Karsten, writing his scripts, correcting his French pronunciations and getting the 280-pound former Defensive Tackle through a month in France. One of the funniest parts was in having to argue with and convince French waiters to bring Adrian his daily double order of steak for dinner – they’d never experienced anyone like that before, they just don’t grow them that large in Europe.
A new director had come on board, Jim Carr, who was giving me my long-awaited on-camera role, a great chance for me that I was going to take full advantage of with a plan to hit hard right out of the gates so my mug would stay in the show.
I knew that Lance was going to win the Tour and had told that to everyone I could find at ESPN. They were about to give up the rights to the Tour after having endured seven-years of paltry American results and I knew that it was a massive mistake. The newly efficient Lance (see my piece on Technical Analysis of a couple of days ago) had finished fourth in the Vuelta the previous Fall, coming within six-seconds of the podium. He’d improved each day of the race and I knew that if the Texas psycho-killer could get that close in Spain, after nine more months of good training and expanding morale, nothing could stop him in in France.
I also thought that after the aggressive police actions at the 1998 Tour, the great Festina scandal, that drug use would go way down, that the now-deprived riders would be vulnerable to someone with a new approach. The grapevine was whispering that Lance might have that weapon. Today this all might sound naive, but mind you, information was so much harder to come by in that era. I thought that Lance was using a hypobaric chamber – a device that simulates living at altitude which serves to increase development of red blood cells in a similar way to the drug EPO, giving added endurance and faster recuperation to the athletes. Gold for cycling.
Jim gave my project his full blessing, and, along with soundman Nick Woods and cameraman Jean-Marc Dubois, we left Paris and set off for Belgium to shoot my report. We found the spot on the Belgian-French border where Festina trainer Willy Voet had been busted with a car-load of drugs, but it was in the middle of a drab industrial park and not nearly compelling enough. So we drove around until I spotted an abandoned customs shed with a French insignia on it, a perfect image. Just remember, if it’s on TV, it’s true. So I did my standup; “It was right here, exactly one-year ago that the greatest scandal in the history of sport….”
Then we went to a cycling doctor I knew, who had a chamber – which was manufactured by an American company by the way, Colorado Altitude Training, and did some interviews. The doctor explained how EPO worked and how it had caused deaths in the early days when no one knew how to use it, adding graphics around his interview to show red cell blood levels and how they changed with the EPO usage. Then, under the headline “Where does doping begin?” we compared and contrasted EPO use with the practice of living at altitude and how those blood levels changed, before moving on to the final bit to illustrate the uncertainly of it all.
The last scene was the good one. I was motionless, inside the hypobaric chamber, arms crossed like a cadaver. It in fact looked like a giant glass coffin. After a beat, I moved, opened the chamber to an explosive hissing sound, rose out of it like Bela Lugosi’s Dracula, holding my microphone: “Adrian, bike riders will do anything to win. And I’m convinced that the use of this chamber will determine the podium in Paris.”
They were so happy with the final piece – Jim had his crack editor (Marybeth Duffy? It’s been a while) that they put it on both ESPN and ABC Sports, and I was on camera every day for the next two years. Which brings me to my final thoughts.
ABC Sports in those days was still the network of Jim McKay and Howard Cosell, and the distribution of my chamber piece, my warning of how things actually work in the world of elite sport went out to a large national audience. How all of those people, from USPS executives to the big money that adopted Lance could have feigned ignorance to realities the way they did is pretty is crazy. They must not have watched much television.
Things have calmed way down since I did that piece, the general practices are now much healthier. But still, racers, athletes from any sport, will continue to do anything to win. It’s their job, and only means of survival to search out any and every advantage they possibly can to improve performance. If they are not on the very edge of what’s permissible, all the years of youthful dedication and sacrifice to their sport will have been lost years. When I see the Ethiopians racing by my house in the NY Marathon and know that they are now flirting with a two-hour record, when one sees Mark Cavendish unceremoniously thrown to the curb the way he was, when I know that Adrian’s NFL career was cut short when his knees were purposely taken out in training camp, when Nibali, second in the Giro and tired, is attacked on social media the way he has …it all only confirms what a desperate world professional sport in fact is.
The riders will use ketones, you can get them on Amazon for goodness sakes, and sports teams will keep on searching for advantages wherever they can find them. If the public really wants change, then, what I’ve been calling for since that piece 20-years ago, a true discussion on the roles of everyone involved needs to happen. From the pharmaceutical companies that allowed such a massive distribution of EPO the way they did – Italy was awash in it – to the sports federations and universities that tacitly encouraged drug use for their athletes, to the television networks needing ratings – why do you think the Russians were in fact in the Olympics with one of their doping whistleblowers dead and the other in protective custody? – to the fans who in the end are simply looking for an exciting escape, everyone needs to be in on the discussion. But don’t hold your breath.
Even Floyd Landis, who has jumped back and forth onto every wheel he could possibly follow in his quest for salvation, finally, and somewhat sadly, acknowledged in the end that there was no real desire for systemic change on the part of USADA, that they were only interested in convictions. So until that magical day of discussion arrives, enjoy the show and be at least happy that the riders are in a healthier environment than they ever have been before.