Quote:
Originally Posted by benb
And yet the grand tours were actually harder in the days before these high test drugs were invented.
Aspirin, tobacco, and wine were not the same kind of doping as EPO and blood transfusions and T patches & steroids.
Heck those guys had to fix their own bikes too!
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Let's not poo poo it. Late 19th and early 20th century riders were doing a lot of -- at the time -- uppers and pain killers. Cocaine, strychnine, chloroform. Henri Desgrange had to tell riders in the rule book the race wouldn't be distributing drugs to them it was so pervasive.
And this is pre all the amphetamines and La Bombas and all other nonsense that crept in post-war.
Are they the same as targeted blood doping? No. But riding 400km over dirt roads while on a cocktail of cocaine and strychnine ain't exactly as romantic as position it with aspirin and wine.
If anything, blood doping made racing more exciting. The early/mid 90s were a heyday of positively bonkers racing.