News of failed drug tests dominates headlines in cycling, a sport in which a chemistry degree appears more valuable than a strong pair of legs at times, and its fans are wondering where it will all end.
Would you believe Denver?
Jonathan Vaughters, a Cherry Creek High School graduate and former Tour de France cyclist, believes so. On his Denver-based Team Slipstream/Chipotle, he has launched a revolutionary drug-testing program he hopes will become the standard in a sport desperately in need of new standards.
The Slipstream/Chipotle director has transformed the term “random testing” to “regular testing.” As in every week. Every test. Every cyclist. The 23-member team, made up of seven Colorado natives, has undergone a combined 583 blood and urine drug tests since January, with no positives.
“I just figured this isn’t that far of a stretch to clean up the sport through a peer-pressure model as opposed to an enforcement model,” Vaughters said recently in his Congress Park home.
Compare Slipstream’s testing program with that of the average pro cyclist who is tested randomly and after stage wins, averaging about four times by this time of the year.
Slipstream/Chipotle doesn’t have quite the clout of a Discovery Channel team in the United States, let alone the world. It’s building its résumé on the tours of California and Georgia instead of France and Italy.
But off road is where Slipstream/Chipotle is making its name.
“Jonathan is doing a great job,” said Pat McQuaid, president of Union Cicliste International, the Swiss-based governing body of international cycling. “I hope he can stick with it.”
Said Steve Sullivan, senior vice president of Liberty Mutual Group, which sponsored one of the world’s top teams in Liberty Seguros of Spain: “I think it’s a terrific idea. Although people can complain about the invasion of privacy, cycling is so dirty, there’s a long uphill road to pedal, to use a bad pun, in order to regain the public’s trust.”
Sullivan knows. His company pulled out of cycling after its star rider, Roberto Heras, tested positive in the 2005 Tour of Spain and the team director, Manolo Saiz, was implicated last year in Operacion Puerto, the Spanish drug bust that has nearly derailed the sport.
After Heras’ positive test, the Liberty Mutual brass sought an adviser to work on a plan to prevent further problems. Their research led to Slipstream/Chipotle becoming pioneers, along with Pro Tour teams CSC and T-Mobile, in team-sanctioned drug testing. The trail eventually led to Vaughters, 33, a former teammate of seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong’s on U.S. Postal Service, and the director of this young team in Denver.
Vaughters, who has ridden four Tours de France, devised an extensive plan calling for an independent agency to test the cyclists every week. Liberty Mutual loved the pitch. Then Operacion Puerto hit last spring and Saiz was arrested outside a Madrid cafe holding bags of doping products.
“No way we could recover from that,” Sullivan said.
When nine riders, including favorites Jan Ullrich and Ivan Basso, were bounced from the start of the 2006 Tour de France and eventual Tour winner Floyd Landis tested positive, the teetering cycling world appeared ready to crash.
Vaughters, who still deeply believes in the sport, had a plan.
“Going into 2007, I said, ‘You know what? We should just try to do this on our team,”‘ Vaughters said. “Some were like, ‘Well, we’re just young riders and it’s not going to be a problem.’ ‘Well, OK, but if we’re building toward the Tour de France, eventually it will be a problem. Why not set the groundwork right now and get these guys used to a certain protocol?”‘
Vaughters contacted Paul Scott, director of UCLA’s Olympic Analytical Lab. Scott said the testing would cost about $300,000.
Vaughters raised the money and instituted the plan in January after his cyclists, who had already signed contracts, agreed to blood and urine testing.
“When the whole thing happened with Floyd and Operacion Puerto and the Tour, it was a little devastating,” said Slipstream/Chipotle’s Lucas Euser, 23. “It made me think like, ‘Shoot, is this what we’re going to have to go through?’ Everybody has thought at one point in their career of, ‘How far am I going to have to go?’ And you question yourself, ‘How far are you willing to go?’
“And I wasn’t willing to go there.”
The test goes beyond what happens behind closed doors in France. The urine test is designed to detect a wide array of steroids and analyzes the body’s natural steroid balance between cortisol, testosterone and all of testosterone’s metabolites. The blood tests cover everything from blood volume, hermatocrit, iron count and growth hormone to the age of red blood cells, of which the artificial addition – blood doping – can create additional oxygen for better endurance.
The weekly testing is crucial. EPO, the drug of choice for many cheaters, is undetectable after only six days.
“We’re not testing directly for EPO,” Vaughters said. “What we’re testing for is if you see a bump in the red cell count. If we see any trend that shouldn’t be there in the red cell count, then the guy’s out.”
Some cynics say teams can’t win in cycling if they don’t cheat. Time will tell. CSC won Paris- Roubaix and the Criterium International and T-Mobile won Gent-Wevelgem. Slipstream won the Most Aggressive Team Award in the Tour of California and was the highest-placed non- Pro Tour team in Georgia.
Vaughters is taking dead aim at one of the four wild-card spots available in the 2008 Tour de France.
“If we do this and it works for us and our riders are happy with it and the media gives us positive coverage for and it actually helps the sport’s image as a whole,” Vaughters said, “I can’t imagine that a bunch of other teams wouldn’t want to jump right into that.”
