Doping allegations cast shadow on Tour

PARIS — As hundreds of riders get ready for the start of cycling’s premier race this weekend, a shadow created by numerous doping allegations hangs over the Tour de France.

Drawing the most attention was a claim from a former assistant to five-time Tour champion Lance Armstrong. The woman said in a recently released book that the American superstar asked her to dispose of used syringes and that she gave him makeup to conceal needle marks on his arm.

Armstrong insists he is drug-free and is suing the book’s authors.

Another moment came last week, when police raided the home of world champion cyclist David Millar and said they found syringes. They also said Millar confessed to using doping products.

Episodes like that have made this cycling’s worst year since 1998 — when drug busts and police raids threatened the integrity of the Tour.

There is now pressure on cycling’s governing body, the UCI, to act. It says it will deploy new methods during this Tour to unmask cheats, like using blood tests to monitor riders.

In the past, only urine tests were used. Blood was drawn, but solely to check for health abnormalities such as an excess of red blood cells, a possible indicator of doping — but not proof.

UCI doctor Mario Zorzoli told The Associated Press that the new blood tests can detect banned substances such as synthetic hemoglobin, which increases oxygen in the muscles, and human growth hormone, which boosts the effect of performance enhancers.

Some riders who have come forward to expose drug use say coaches pressured them to break the rules. The rewards of winning also inspire cheats.

Millar, the defending world time trial champion and winner of a Tour time trial last year, has been barred from this year’s race.

He risks becoming the ninth person placed under formal investigation in a French doping probe that has enveloped current and former members of his Cofidis team.

In February, popular Italian rider Marco Pantani, the 1998 Tour winner who tested positive for drugs in 1999, was found dead of a cocaine overdose in a hotel room.

“Sometimes, it takes a death — or maybe more than one death — for people to say … it’s time to do something,” David Howman, director-general of the World Anti-Doping Agency, said in a telephone interview.

In March, Spanish cyclist Jesus Manzano alleged that doctors on his former team, Kelme, pressured him to take performance enhancers that reportedly left him close to dying.

Kelme denied the charges, but Tour organizers barred the team from this year’s race.

In the new book, “L.A. Confidential, the Secrets of Lance Armstrong,” former Armstrong assistant Emma O’Reilly made claims that revived past suspicions about the cycling champion, who came back from cancer in 1999 to win the grueling three-week race.

But the book offers no real proof to back up its suggestions that the 32-year-old Texan has doped.

And allegations that some riders cheat have never stopped millions of fans from lining the Tour route.

Even Richard Virenque, a French rider at the center of the 1998 doping scandal, has since been cheered wildly as he muscled up steep climbs.

Virenque, one of France’s favorite riders, was let off the hook in 2000 after he admitted doping.

But his comments at the time showed how deep the problem goes.

“We don’t say doping. We say we’re preparing for the race,” he said then. “To take drugs is to cheat. As long as the person doesn’t test positive, they’re not taking drugs.”