Doping
Maertens told L'Équipe that "like everyone else", he had used amphetamines in round-the-houses races but he insisted that he had ridden without drugs in big Tours - not least because he knew he would be tested for them. He was angry when Belgian television used his photograph as a backdrop to discussions about drug-taking in the sport.
Rumours intensified when Maertens' successes became erratic. He flew to the United States to see a doctor, to confirm that he had no drug problems. He and a medical advisers flew from Amsterdam to New York on 25 May 1979 in a DC-10. Maertens mentioned to his colleague, Paul de Nijs, that one of the engines made an odd noise. The plane continued towards Chicago but crashed on take-off when an engine fell off, killing 279.
Maertens was caught in drugs tests. He was first found positive after Professor Michel Debackere perfected a test in 1974 for pemoline, a drug in the amphetamine family that riders believed to be undetectable.
He was disqualified in the Flèche Wallonne of 1977 and found guilty the same year in the Tour de France, the Tour of Belgium and the Ronde van Vlaanderen. He also had a positive finding for cortisone in 1986.
Michel Pollentier is quoted as saying: "I told him I could see only one way out for him: to see a psychiatrist, advice he considered stupid. I’ve never hesitated to confess that I spent three weeks under the surveillance of Dr Dejonckheere at the St-Joseph clinic at Ostend and that after treatment I stayed under his control for another two years. Why hide it? It’s impossible to come out of a situation like that without the help of a doctor."
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