We need to do a ctrl+F on the site to see if we’ve ever done a doping joke along the lines of, “We thought cycling would be like Breaking Away, but it’s more like Breaking Bad.” If we haven’t, now is the moment. A 19-year-old has been handed a three-year ban for testing positive for crystal meth at the World Championships.
We have covered some wild doping stories in our time. We’ve seen pigeons used to transport samples, motors hidden in seat tubes, and riders blaming positive tests on their unborn twin brothers. But meth, unsurprisingly, is a new one. (Or, at least, one we didn’t expect to see return in the second quarter of the 21st century.)
Artyom Proskuryakov from Azerbaijan has been hit with a three-year ban after testing positive for methamphetamine during the 2025 Junior World Championships in Rwanda.
A Rat Wore a Wire
According to the UCI, this wasn’t just a random pee-in-a-cup situation. The testing was “intelligence-led,” which is the polite way of saying: “Someone snitched on you.”
Proskuryakov tested positive for D-methamphetamine and its metabolites in two separate samples collected on September 23, 2025, the day of the Junior Men’s Road Race.
For the record, he DNF’d that race. So if the goal was performance enhancement, the meth didn’t exactly turn him into Tadej Pogačar. It just turned him into a lad who didn’t finish a bike race but probably had a really good time while doing it.
Why the Fuck Would he do Meth?
Methamphetamine is a stimulant, and technically, it is a performance enhancer. In the Tom Simpson era, amphetamines were the peloton’s breakfast of choice. Not a bad breakfast, but actually not the healthiest choice if you’re planning to ride a bike race.
In the modern era of micro-dosing EPO and sophisticated blood vectors, popping crystal meth before a Junior World Championship is certainly a choice. Our thoughts on doping are complex, but meth is a little bit bad for you and we do not recommend doing it to improve your performance.
Proskuryakov’s ban runs until November 17, 2028, effectively nuking his U23 career before it even started.