Hope dies last
Posted November 22nd, 2006 in Dope
Skibby, who won a stage of the 1991 Tour de France, said in an autobiography to be published Wednesday that he started using steroids that same year when he was on the Dutch TVM team. He said he switched to the endurance-boosting substance EPO in 1993.
Skibby, the only Danish rider to have won stages in the Tour de France, the Giro d’Italia and the Spanish Vuelta, said he had also used testosterone. “The effect was almost immediate. On the bicycle I had a huge reserve of strength and I felt stronger than ever.”
More Jesper Skibby.
“This has been really tough,” Skibby, 42, told reporters at a news conference ahead of the planned book release. “This is a subject I have always wanted to hide.” The 42-year-old, who retired six years ago, said he was tired of “living a lie”.
In addition to doping he had struggled with poor self-esteem despite a different public image, he said. “I have hidden many things behind many masks. It has been part of a role game,” Skibby said.
In an interview late on Monday with public broadcaster DR Sports news, Skibby said that his poor season 1990 made him seek other options to move ahead and he conceded that “doping helped my body feel alive”.
Even more Jesper Skibby.
I had more air and was able to keep up with the ever-increasing pace in the peloton more easily,” Mr Skibby writes. Still he admits he had a guilty conscience.
Skibby injected himself with EPO, but he used “a contact,” another road racing cyclist, to get started on the illegal drugs. Skibby refuses to name his contact and says the blame for the abuse is entirely on himself.
Yes, the guilty conscience is cleared but the code of silence remains intact. Yet his silence speaks volumes for those of us who refuse to allow talk of conspiracy by WADA, the French or other doping authorities cloud our thinking, cycling has a problem, it’s a clear and present danger to the sport and it comes from within - the real conspiracy lies elsewhere and it is the silence of the riders who dope or those who see it happening and don’t do anything about it.
Skibby’s admission is a cry for help, not just for himself, but for the sport as a whole, clearly the doping thing is eating away at the athletes and probably more so now that the political and ethical climate is changing.
Those in cycling who continue to defend the indefensible should be embarrassed for themselves - no need to name names, they know who they are. They continue to hide behind the skirts of due process all the while ignoring the unfolding list of sporting crimes being perpetrated on the sport by many of their much loved heroes.
Their support gives aid and comfort to the denialist position. They talk about evidence, but refuse to acknowledge the greater narrative, and they hold the sporting authorities up to a standard that apparently does not apply to the riders. In their world the riders always get to play the get out of jail free card.
Dick Pound and WADA are right, the real story is slowly unfolding on a daily basis, and as the mea culpas keep coming Pound and WADA just keep getting righter. I repeat, hope dies last.
technorati tags: cycling, doping, jesper, skibby
What others have to say…
November 22nd, 2006 at 10:25 pm
Of course not, and that’s the problem…..
November 23rd, 2006 at 3:04 pm
I don’t know if you noticed today, but Gewiss is re-entering cycling through mountain biking.
Those guys bankrolled possibly the most notorious dope team back in the day - So a lot of questions will have to be asked about whether Gewiss sponsorship means bringing back people associated with that era.
November 23rd, 2006 at 4:05 pm
Hopefully the new climate will mean sponsors come down hard on doping, it’s good that Gewiss is back, the sport needs them, as it needs all sponsors.
Maybe their return after such a long period means that they now see a possibly cleaner sport as a better bet to extend their brand, and they can feel safe in knowing that their money will not be used to bankroll doping.
November 23rd, 2006 at 11:21 pm
Maybe they chose mountain biking because there are fewer controls and its easier to cheat.
Damn all this cycnicism
November 25th, 2006 at 6:04 pm
I’ve never doubted that doping occurs in cycling, what I do doubt is that cycling is diriter than any other professional sport. About the only sport I can think of where the athletes are known to be subjected to a similar level of scrutiny is track and field.
Football of all codes, basketball, rowing; the list goes on. It’s my impression that doping controls are nowhere near as stringet so who’s to say that cycling’s any dirtier than any other sport?
I may be wrong about doping controls in other sports but I don’t think I am.
November 26th, 2006 at 6:49 am
No you’re not Euan, T/F is the most tested, but in WADA’s report earlier this year, cycling still came up as number one in it’s rate of positive results, it made for an interesting study that’s for sure because it contained all sports right down to tiddlywinks(kidding).
That rate of return is what has got WADA’s knickers in a twist as far as cycling is concerned, clearly the signs point to something institutional.
As far as other sports are concerned, well for example we know that North American pro sport is hopelessly compromised, that’s why I take such a hard line toward American positives, it’s the home of doping and I think that they are trying to kill off drug testing or neuter it in order to serve their sporting interests.
In an open doping environment it’s the guys with the most money and technology that will win the most. That is fundamentally unfair not to mention ethically wrong in a sporting context. But as I’ve written before their attitude just mirrors their response to other aspects of multilateralism.
In the brave new sporting world that we’re about to encounter, if we care about our sport we have no choice but to support the testing authorities in their fight.
I’ll stop rambling on here……….
December 14th, 2006 at 1:47 pm
[…] 9) Hope dies last. Jesper Skibby is no longer living a lie. […]
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From memory, there was always suspicion that TVM was engaged in systemic doping practices.
By taking the blame himself, I don’t think Skibby is telling the whole story.