# Mr. 60% was for real!



## Dwayne Barry (Feb 16, 2003)

Apparently on a Belgian TV show this weekend a soigneur with Telekom back in the late 90s said Riis once recorded a hematocrit of 64%. He also said Zabel was the only rider who refused to take EPO!


----------



## BikinCO (Feb 17, 2004)

*From Cyclingnews.com*

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news.php?id=news/2007/mar07/mar26news2



> Doping in the 90's, according to Belgian TV
> By Susan Westemeyer
> 
> A Belgian TV program Panorama claimed on Sunday night that former professional cyclist Uwe Ampler introduced EPO to Team Telekom in the early 1990s, against the will of team manager Walter Godefroot. Bjarne Riis allegedly made use of that and other doping products when he won the Tour de France in 1996, according to former seigneur Jef D'hondt.
> ...


----------



## rocco (Apr 30, 2005)

Dwayne Barry said:


> Apparently on a Belgian TV show this weekend a soigneur with Telekom back in the late 90s said Riis once recorded a hematocrit of 64%. He also said Zabel was the only rider who refused to take EPO!



Although the program said about Zabel, "he tried a small amount".


----------



## mohair_chair (Oct 3, 2002)

When someone says "Erik Zabel did not do it" and then says "He tried a small amount," that's a contradiction. You either did it or you didn't. There is no middle ground.


----------



## Dwayne Barry (Feb 16, 2003)

mohair_chair said:


> When someone says "Erik Zabel did not do it" and then says "He tried a small amount," that's a contradiction. You either did it or you didn't. There is no middle ground.


Sure there is. Trying crack once is way different than being a crackhead.


----------



## mohair_chair (Oct 3, 2002)

Dwayne Barry said:


> Sure there is. Trying crack once is way different than being a crackhead.


Huh? 

If you tried crack once, you can't say you've never done crack.


----------



## terzo rene (Mar 23, 2002)

I really like Lefevere's comment."Just what do you want, anyway? Do you want every rider to get down on his knees and confess?"

Somehow I doubt cycling would be forgiven even if they did. Yet futbol is as clean as the driven snow and the Puerto case evaporated the minute Lefevere and others started being quoted in the press asking what happened to all the other athletes Fuentes stated he treated.


----------



## Dwayne Barry (Feb 16, 2003)

mohair_chair said:


> Huh?
> 
> If you tried crack once, you can't say you've never done crack.


Of course not but there is a huge middle ground between trying it once or twice and using it chronically.


----------



## rodster (Jun 29, 2006)

Riis responds to doping allegations

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news.php?id=news/2007/mar07/mar27news

Note the lack of a denial . . .

_Team CSC boss Bjarne Riis has brushed off allegations from former Team Telekom soigneur Jef D'hondt that he used EPO and other doping products to win the 1996 Tour de France. The allegations were made on Belgian TV program Panorama on Sunday evening and claimed, among other things, that "Riis had a hematocrit of 64 at one time during the Tour," caused by the use of EPO.

"I have never had a particularly close relation with Jef D'hondt and he has no validation for the allegations he is making," said Riis in a statement released on Monday evening. "There will always be someone out there trying to make money by talking about the past and in my opinion that is probably what he is trying to do here.

"This is probably not the first nor the last time these kinds of stories surface," he continued. "To me, it's all in the past and I do not wish to be held accountable every time someone finds it interesting to bring up some ten-year-old story. I truly believe the future is much more important than the past. I want to be judged on the work I'm doing with my team today, and the results we achieve - that is what's important to me."_


----------



## euro-trash (May 1, 2004)

rodster said:


> Riis responds to doping allegations
> 
> http://www.cyclingnews.com/news.php?id=news/2007/mar07/mar27news
> 
> ...


I was also shocked by a lack of a real denial.
If he was retired and not involved in cycling, I'd say, yeah, his "it's in the past" argument is fine. But, his job is to manage and "prepare" riders for races, making what he did 10 years ago VERY relevant.


----------



## Dwayne Barry (Feb 16, 2003)

For Riis to deny it would be just plain silly. At this point the cat is well out of the bag. At the time Riis won it was in all probability the case that pretty much everyone was juiced out of their gourds on EPO, cortisone, and growth hormone. Maybe, just maybe, in the last few years there are some guys accomplishing big things in cycling while riding clean. People have to remember up until a few years ago there was essentially no effective testing to prevent doping and there was a culture within cycling that accepted and condoned doping. The ones who didn't dope were the exception to the rule not the other way around. Yet another voice from the era is on cyclingnews today. 

"EPO, growth hormone, cortisone... I used everything that was common practice in the peloton at the time," Roux told the Bordeaux judges on the first day of the trial, in June 2006. "Everybody did. The greatest riders used things that I couldn't get with my small salary. They bought synthetic haemoglobin and underwent blood transfusions, which I have never messed with." 

Things are looking up though, as I think clearly the peloton is cleaner today than just a few years ago. All you've got to do is look at the Giro last year to see that nowadays if you do dope extensively you get a leg up rather than a level playing field.


----------



## tricycletalent (Apr 2, 2005)

*Respect.*

I really respect the fact that Riis doesn't let himself get intimidated to neither confess nor lie. I also think it is a lot more fair to the few clean riders out there. Claiming to be clean when you are doping to win is really low. Shut up until you get caught for God's sake.


----------



## terzo rene (Mar 23, 2002)

Dwayne Barry said:


> Things are looking up though, as I think clearly the peloton is cleaner today than just a few years ago. All you've got to do is look at the Giro last year to see that nowadays if you do dope extensively you get a leg up rather than a level playing field.


I've found myself thinking similar things in the last year but I'm really not so sure it's true other than to say a manipulated 47 HCT is "cleaner" than a 57. Certainly there was a bigger gap between the top guys like LA, Basso, Jan, Vino, Valverde and the rest of the pack but none of them were getting a leg up on their real competition. There is also the Discovery team last year vs this year. It's hard to argue they are cleaner this year than last year based on results - and who is on the team now too.

Form still makes more difference than dope so it's hard to be sure what's going on. Just compare Ullrich to Basso in the Giro. Jan did well after being topped off with a transfusion in the flat TT but other than that he was invisible (except for when the RAI commentators made fun of him when they showed him on the climbs). I think the most realistic conclusion is that a lot of supply lines and methodologies got disrupted last year and it took everyone a while to adjust to the "new rules" and reestablish the former hierarchy.


There were excel files that came out in the Conconi trial in Italy that listed all sorts of names in cycling and other sports, Riis among them, so for Barnie to deny it would be inviting someone to drag it out again and prove otherwise. 11 guys on Gewiss and 10 on Carrera (including Roche for you head in the sand anglophiles) all had checkmarks in the EPO treatment boxes in his spreadsheet.


----------

