‘Education has helped. Plus many riders today weren’t even born when the past offences happened. However, we always have to be awake to fight against doping. It can never stop.’
The words of Nicholas Raudenski, head of the ITA, aka International Testing Agency, an independent organisation that implements anti-doping programmes for international sports federations. It was created in 2018 under the supervision of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the International Olympic Committee (IOC). Raudenski’s note of anti-doping optimism was struck just before this year’s Tour de France in a webinar hosted by the ITA. But how clean is professional cycling in the modern era?
Pragmatism rules
‘I feel it’s in a better place than years gone by but it’s always good to leave the light on,’ says Roger Legeay, president of the MPCC, from his farmhouse near Le Mans, France. The MPCC is the Mouvement Pour un Cyclisme Credible and is a voluntary cycling organisation set up in 2005 to fight doping. ‘We formed seven years after the Festina Affair and not long before Operación Puerto [see box on p94]. Arguably, both big doping incidents were a long time ago but we still had Operation Aderlass in 2019, so we must always leave the light on.’
Since 2014 the MPCC has published its annual barometer, which takes into account cases revealed by federations, anti-doping agencies, the justice system and the press. This covers all sports. For 2021, weightlifting and track and field had the ignominious honour of heading the table with 54 doping convictions apiece, with cycling in seventh on 19. Of these, 12 were on the road, albeit for the first time in MPCC history, none of these
