Jacques Anquetil - Doping

Doping

Anquetil took a forthright and controversial stand on the use of performance-enhancing drugs. He never hid that he took drugs and in a debate with a government minister on French television said only a fool would imagine it was possible to ride Bordeaux–Paris on just water.

He and other cyclists had to ride through "the cold, through heatwaves, in the rain and in the mountains", and they had the right to treat themselves as they wished, he said in a television interview, before adding:

There was implied acceptance of doping right to the top of the state: the president, Charles de Gaulle, said of Anquetil:

He won Liège–Bastogne–Liège in 1966. An official named Collard told him once he had got changed that there would be a drugs test. "Too late", Anquetil said. "If you can collect it from the soapy water there, go ahead. I'm a human being, not a fountain." Collard said he would return half an hour later; Anquetil said he would already have left for a dinner appointment 140 km away. Two days later the Belgian cycling federation disqualified Anquetil and fined him. Anquetil responded by calling urine tests "a threat to individual liberty" and engaged a lawyer. The case was never heard, the Belgians backed down and Anquetil became the winner.

Pierre Chany said:

"Jacques had the strength - for which he was always criticised - to say out loud what others would only whisper. So, when I asked him 'What have you taken?' he didn't drop his eyes before replying. He had the strength of conviction."

Anquetil argued that professional riders were workers and had the same right to treat their pains as, say, a geography teacher. But the argument found less support as more riders were reported to have died or suffered health problems through drug-related incidents, including the death of the English rider, Tom Simpson, in the Tour de France of 1967.

However, there was great support in the cyclist community for Anquetil's argument that, if there were to be rules and tests, the tests should be carried out consistently and with dignity. He said it was professional dignity, the right of a champion not to be ridiculed in front of his public, that led to his refusal to take a test in the centre of the Vigorelli track after breaking the world hour record.

The unrecognised time that Anquetil set that day was in any case quickly broken by the Belgian rider, Ferdi Bracke. Anquetil was hurt that the French government had never sent him a telegram of congratulations but sent one to Bracke, who wasn't French. It was a measure of the unacceptability of Anquetil's arguments, as was the way he was quietly dropped from future French teams.