Doping
There were no doping rules in Robic's era. The historian and television commentator, Jean-Paul Ollivier, wrote of the 1950 Tour de France in which he said Robic was deeply depressed, weeping abundantly.
He thought the Tour was lost. He had a cold and went to bed shivering with a fever. The next day, the boss of the hotel, unaccustomed to the timetable of the Tour de France, forgot to get up. The riders had to prepare their own breakfast in record time. Robic had enteritis. He was weak . Escorted by his team-mates, Robert Bonnaventure and Gino Sciardis, he finished the stage pitifully at St-Étienne and dropped from fourth to seventh place in the standings, 37 minutes behind Ferdi Kübler. Robic was still weak at the start of the time trial from St-Étienne to Lyon. His soigneur, Libaud, gave him an injection of solucamphor to get him going again
Robic said doping had always existed but that the most he had taken was a bottle of coffee mixed with "calva"—(Calvados).
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