How to Spot a Doper (Nov 2009)
One of many guest articles for Derailed. Absolutely no idea who wrote it though. Zoom Gordo maybe? Though I’m sure some of the jokes are mine (I’m particularly fond of “I’ve ridden up that mountain myself and I did the last 5km in an ambulance”), so maybe it was a collab. Don’t know. Someone email us and claim it.
This article is from one of my favorite issues of DerailedUK (#11). The graphic design was so intentionally terrible that it ruined the content. That’s something we only occasionally achieve at Cyclry, sadly.
How to Spot a Doper
GUEST FEATURE. Published November, 2009
They’re foreign. This is the first and most important rule. Our own, salt of the earth, heart of oak home-grown riders are all beyond suspicion, due to their upbringing of good manners, fair play and honesty. In fact, should one of our own find himself the wrong side of a test, the validity of said test should immediately be called in to question. Proof will have to be of the overwhelming variety: Finding a syringe in their flat, say.
For journalists, this rule applies to all corners of the English-speaking world in which your mag is sold — an admission of innocence from an English speak rider is sufficient proof, regardless of how hilariously poor their excuse may be. The same does NOT apply to foreign riders, over whom a suspicion will linger — and be continuously referred to — for evermore.
They beat your favourite. This is a dead giveaway. How else could your blue-eyed boy have been so soundly beaten by a dirty foreigner than by impure means? All suggestions that the latter simply trained harder and rode with his brain switched on will be dismissed with a contemptuous snort.
They’re quite good. Another dead giveaway. Winning races? Attacking? Hell, I’ve ridden up that mountain myself and I did the last 5km in an ambulance. There’s no way any human could manage it. The link is quite obvious: To win, you have to ride faster than everybody else. If you ride faster than everybody else, you must be on drugs. It’s simple really.
They looked at you funny. (Journalists only) While the fact that a star rider did not bestow the appropriate amount of respect onto you, the continental correspondent of a low-circulation magazine in one of cycling’s backwaters, does not in itself constitute an admission of doping, by the law of averages they are a pro bike racer and will probably get caught at some point in their careers, thus allowing you to bask in their disgrace.
They did a bit of charlie in a nightclub once. Ignoring the fact that in many other sports it is considered ‘a bit of harmless fun’ to hoover up enough chop to grout a bathroom, get blind drunk and then pummel a complete stranger into a coma, for a cyclist to be out of bed past 9pm is surefire proof that he’s a wrong ‘un.
They’re old. Obviously, for all the true lovers of cycling, all history must be dismissed as tainted, with a year zero for the new dawn of ‘proper’ cycling starting with the formation of the Garmin-Chipotle team.