Prisonnier du Dopage

Philippe Gaumont. Bernard Grasset 2005. 304 pages paperback, 17.90 euros.

‘A total idiot who should have left the team four years ago … a nutter, but very gifted at manipulating people.' So David Millar on Philippe Gaumont, in mid-2004. Now Gaumont's exposé-cum-confession of his years as a druggie confirms Millar's view of himself, and reveals that he and Millar (now a self-confessed liar) were just two of a vast ring of nutters normally referred to as the ‘professional peloton'.

A natural sportsman, Gaumont was a real talent, fast enough to win the French pursuit title twice, but with a roadman's endurance. He joined Castorama in 1994, the year in which he won his last ‘clean' race, the Tour de Poitou-Charentes. And it was in 1994 that EPO-fuelled Italian squads like Gewiss (team doctor, M. Ferrari) opened a huge gap on the rest of the pro peloton. ‘Give us what they're taking and we'll get the results too,' said Thierry Marie. Not that they were unfamiliar with medicaments – they already took dozens of legal drugs in order to ‘prepare' themselves: dosing and injecting yourself was already rooted. Gaumont's first illicit drug was Kenacort, a corticoid. ‘These are all very well,' one of his team-mates told their doctor, Armand Mégret, ‘but we need EPO if we're going to stay competitive in the big races. Fix us up.'

That winter saw his initiation into amphetamine abuse in a bizarre ritual in which all his team-mates took turns to press the plunger of the syringe. ‘All around was rose-coloured', and unable to sleep he went for a 450-mile drive. Joining Gan in 1996 he found the same culture.

During early season training the drugs are carried in your wet-weather bags in the team vehicle. You use corticoids, steroids (especially nandrolone), amphetamines, cocaine, EPO, and occasionally heroin. You take drugs to drive, to dance, to party, to train and to race. Amphetamines keep you awake so you take sleeping tablets and narcotics. You feel a bit down, the team doctor gives you anti-depressants. Being a druggie becomes the sign of acceptance: you're a made man, a member of the Mafia, the owner of a completely reversed set of values, a different reality. You acquire a criminal mentality: out there are villains – drug testers, the police, the dummies (not many of them) who don't do what you do and may grass: ‘All cyclists insist they're not cheating, because everyone's doing it … but despite all our rituals intended to forge a sacred bond of lies and omérta , there is no solidarity in the world of cycling'.

‘In 1995 I went into it head down,' Gaumont says, taking no cognisance of risks. Mégret, good only for corticoids, left Castorama and was replaced by Patrick Nédélec, who knew where to get EPO. Six ampoules cost £360, against Gaumont's monthly salary of £2500, and it worked a treat. At last, they were in the fast lane. And there Gaumont stayed: for the next ten years, like most French professionals, he wouldn't race or train without being drugged. His 1997 victory in Ghent – Wevelgem brought him no pleasure, nor did any other aspect of something he now did solely for money. Everything was bent. Even their prize money was paid, illegally, into an account in Luxembourg to avoid tax.

When Gaumont joined Cofidis in 1997 he found the fully-developed drug culture which existed (exists?) in every pro team. Almost everyone is both user and supplier. Everyone knows what's going on, and a special language with code phrases is used to obscure the truth from outsiders: ‘Ask Marcelo if he's been to the supermarket.' All but two team members regularly injected EPO and the team doctor bought two centrifuges to check their haematocrit levels.

Gaumont says he knows for certain only two riders who remained clean: the Estonian Janek Tombak, and David Moncoutié. The latter was joshed by his team-mates (‘When are you going to move up to the fast lane?'), and mocked by the same team managers (‘He hasn't a fighter's temperament') who now cite him as a role model: ‘We need ten like him in the team'.

For a novice writer, the whole wretched story is well told and accessible to anyone with ‘A' Level French and a contemporary dictionary. Gaumont appears to be sole author, and no ghost writer is credited; but there are signs of skilful editing, especially in the time structure, which begins with his arrest at Orly, on the evidence of his former team-mate Robert Sassone, and presents the rest as an extended flashback. No-one can be any doubt that most of it's true. It's a tale of self-destruction, of the squandering of immense talent, and above all of the cynical deception of the sport's governing bodies, of the public, the press, the riders themselves, and their wives and families. The UCI's 50% haematocrit ceiling ‘for health reasons' merely meant that every team knew its riders must be at 49% to remain competitive. The UCI rankings, linked in pro teams to salaries, offered another temptation. This book will dispel any illusions that the druggies are in only a tiny minority, whatever the great blusterer Hein Verbruggen (surely the worst thing ever to happen to professional cycling) says for public consumption. Even he can't be that stupid. Athletes test positive for drugs because they've taken them.

Reasons are not hard to find: the illusion of wealth and fame is held out to ignorant young men, mostly not very bright, emotional adolescents, by older men – managers, masseurs, doctors, sponsors – whose own new cars and houses depend on the performance of their athletes. They cannot plead youth and ignorance, and far too few of them have been prosecuted and banned for life. None opposed their riders' practices, though a few, almost equally culpable, turned a blind eye.

Ramin Minovi