A formerly great Dane
Yellow peril: Bjarne Riis leading the 1996 Tour de France.
On July 16 1996, cyclist Bjarne Riis climbed the dreaded ascent to the Pyrenean ski station at Hautacam with an ease that shocked not only his opponents, but the entire cycling world. That summer, he became the first Dane to win the Tour de France and the celebrations in Copenhagen when he arrived back home are the stuff of legend – it remains the biggest party ever held in honour of one person in our small kingdom.
There was, however, always a lingering doubt whether Bjarne Riis had pulled off his amazing achievement solely by legitimate means. The way he was able to stay in the high gears was almost superhuman, and there was always speculation about his win at this, the height of the era of blood-boosting hormone EPO: the nickname for Riis muttered in some cycling circles was “Mr 60%” – referring to his abnormally high haematocrit (level of oxygen-carrying red blood cells).
The doping monster that has so plagued the noble sport of cycling refused to go away, and for 11 years Riis has, again and again, been forced to deny taking EPO or any other performance-enhancing drug. In the meantime, he has managed to build up a top-class Denmark-based cycling team, under his ownership and leadership. Team CSC today belongs to the absolute elite of the sport.
Then, at 4pm, Copenhagen time, today a serious-looking Bjarne Riis entered a press conference at the CSC headquarters in Lyngby, just north of Copenhagen. As expected, his time of denial was over:
I’ve come here to lay my cards on the table. I confess to taking performance-enhancing drugs, including EPO, during the nineties. From around 1993 to 1998, I used drugs continuously. This was commonplace back then. I regret it, but I am still proud of my achievements.
The confession has, no doubt, been extremely difficult for a man who has given his whole life to the sport; Riis’s importance for the impressive state of Danish cycling cannot be overestimated. In 1996, he was nicknamed “the bald eagle from Herning”, but today, it was not only the feathers on the eagle’s head that were missing. Sitting in front of an inquisitive press, the once proud and reserved super-athlete looked like a moth-eaten old bird. Admitting that the jewel in the crown of his career was based on cheating must have been the hardest decision of his life – a decision he took 11 years to come to, years that made him a liar as he was forced to repeating his denial of wrong doing to the press over and over. Not only a liar, but a hypocrite, since Riis’s team sacked Ivan Basso last year after revelation that the Italian star was implicated in the blood-doping activities of Dr Fuentes during the Spanish police’s Operation Puerto investigation.
Should Riis be stripped of his title, a journalist asked today.
“That’s up to you guys. I’ve got my winners jersey in a cardboard box in my garage. You can come and get it if you want. That’s OK by me. You can’t take away my experience and my pride of winning”, he answered.
The reason Bjarne Riis finally told the truth is, of course, that the truth wants out, and the daily revelations that the golden Telekom team of the 1990s, which, besides Riis, consisted of Tour de France winner Jan Ullrich, Rolf Aldag, Brian Holm and Erik Zabel, among others, was thoroughly infested by blood-doping. Only yesterday, Aldag, Holm and Zabel (a multiple winner of the green jersey on the Tour) came clean, the latter sobbing his apology to the world press: “I’ve been lying for 11 years, but enough is enough. I don’t want my son, who loves the sport of cycling, to go through the same as I did,” Zabel said at the official T-Mobile [successor to Telekom] press conference.
It is notable that, thus far, both CSC and Telecom are standing by their former riders. This is becoming cycling’s big chance of finally ridding the sport of the illness that has threatened to kill it off. For, although he is the first winner of the Tour to admit to wrongdoing, it is not just Bjarne Riis who has won the Tour by cheating. Serious doubts still loom over many recent winners. Then, there is the stripping of the winner’s title from the 2006 winner, Floyd Landis, along with the scandals of Ivan Basso, Richard Virenque and the tragic death of Marco Pantani.
All in all, it is now clear that more or less the entire Tour de France peloton were using EPO and other performance-enhancing medicaments at one time or another. This might be of some comfort to Riis: if they were all doped, he can still take pride in being the best rider of 1996. The problem is, of course, that we will never know for sure who was and who wasn’t doped. A wave of confessions is sweeping the cycling world now, but it is unlikely that all will confess to their sins.
The confessions will have no direct consequences for those involved. Riis will not be sacked by CSC – he owns it, in any case – and will remain in charge of the team. His doping admission relates to the German-based Telekom team a decade ago.
Although momentarily disgraced, no doubt Riis will be met by many well-wishers who will congratulate him on coming clean. But he should have done this a long time ago. He has had several chances, and it is more than doubtful whether he would had held today’s press conference had his former teammates not already started talking and forced his hand.
Many Danes had suspected this for years, but it is still a sad day for Danish sport. Apart from our national football team winning Euro 92 (a tournament we didn’t qualify for and only became part of as a substitute for war-torn Yugoslavia), this was the greatest sporting moment in our history. Until now, that is.
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