The exhaustion of six-day races on the track was countered by the riders' soigneurs (the French word for "carer"), helpers akin to seconds in boxing. "It existed, it has always existed", said the French reporter and author, Pierre Chany, who followed 49 Tours before his death in 1996. Yet the fact remains great cyclists have been doping themselves, then and now." Early doping in cycling ĭrug-taking in cycling predates the Tour de France. For the past 30 years it has been officially prohibited. ![]() ![]() Journalist Hans Halter wrote in 1998 that "For as long as the Tour has existed, since 1903, its participants have been doping themselves. Max Novich referred to the Tour de France in a 1973 issue of New York State Journal of Medicine as "a cycling nightmare". Those came shortly before the death of Tom Simpson in the Tour de France of 1967. Not until after World War II were sporting or even particularly health issues raised. Cycling, having been from the start a sport of extremes, whether of speed by being paced by tandems, motorcycles and even cars, or of distance, the suffering involved encouraged the means to alleviate it. Use of performance-enhancing drugs in cycling predates the Tour de France. Riders began using substances as a means of increasing performance rather than dulling the senses, and organizing bodies such as the Tour and the International Cycling Union (UCI), as well as government bodies, enacted policies to combat the practice. Early Tour riders consumed alcohol and used ether, among other substances, as a means of dulling the pain of competing in endurance cycling. ![]() There have been allegations of doping in the Tour de France since the race began in 1903.
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