STRASBOURG, France — Exploding in anger, Frenchman Henri Pelissier dumped the contents of his bag on a table in front of reporters. The defending Tour de France champion had just quit because race officials penalized him for a minor rules violation.
"You have no idea what the Tour de France is," Pelissier raged. "But do you want to see how we keep going? Cocaine for the eyes. Chloroform for the gums. You want to see the pills too? Under the mud our flesh is white as a sheet. Our eyes are swimming and every night we dance like St. Vitus instead of sleeping."
The year was 1924.
In 1967, British world champion Tom Simpson died on a hot day during a punishing climb up Mont Ventoux in Provence. Found in his pocket were amphetamines. Simpson had wanted a little extra boost.
It also has been documented that early Tour riders used strychnine, a deadly poison that, used in the right dosage, helps an athlete by causing his muscles to constrict faster.
"The Tour de France was started with a bunch of vagabond riders who used everything at their disposal," said cycling journalist David Walsh, who co-wrote "LA Confidential: The Secrets of Lance Armstrong," a book that lays out a case that seven-time Tour champion Armstrong used blood-doping techniques. "They used strychnine, cocaine, caffeine, amphetamines."
And now it is thought that many of cycling's top riders also use dangerous means to improve their performance.
"The drugs have changed, but the culture hasn't," said Walsh, who considers the drug culture in cycling to be self-perpetuating. "Most of the team sports directors are former pro cyclists. They teach what they learned."
Before this year's Tour even started, 13 riders, including three of the top five finishers from the 2005 race, were sent home by their teams after their names showed up in connection with a raid made by Spanish police on the laboratory of a Madrid doctor in May.
It hasn't been proved that any of the 13 are guilty of blood doping, but team leaders and race officials agreed to abide by an international cycling rule that any athlete involved in a doping investigation would not be allowed to compete.
The suspensions followed a continuation of doping accusations against Armstrong, a cancer survivor who retired last July after winning his seventh consecutive Tour. Most recent is testimony under oath by Betsy Andreu, wife of former Armstrong teammate Frankie Andreu, that Armstrong told doctors three days after he had cancer surgery in 1996 that he had used performance-enhancing drugs.
