Paul Kimmage had an interesting interview with Jonathan Vaughters. Kimmage raced professionally for 4 yrs but probably gained more notoriety for his book 'Rough Ride' which detailed his life as a pro and included stories of drug use in the peloton. He now writes for the London Times.
Vaughters does not come out and implicate US Postal as being guilty of doping but Vaughters rode for very few teams and he does not speak badly of his times racing in the US or with the Santa Clara or Credit Agricole teams. As he says "read between the lines".
Below, I have exerpted key points of the story.
Jonathan Vaughters is telling me a story about the pivotal moment of his life as a professional cyclist. It happened on a sunny Tuesday morning in the city of Pau, as he prepared for the start of the 14th stage of the 2001 Tour de France. Spirits were high in the peloton that morning; the last of the high mountain peaks had been crossed two days before and there were just six stages to race before the chequered flag in Paris.
Vaughters had never made it to Paris. In 1999, his Tour debut, he had been brought down in a spectacular pile-up on the second stage. A year later, he crashed out again, overshooting a corner at speed on a descent in the Pyrenees. His third appearance in the race had been the best to date. He had experienced the thrill of winning (his team, Credit Agricole, had the team-time trial), survived the Alps and Pyrenees, and was nailed-on to make his first Tour finish.
And then, incredibly, the curse had struck again.
The previous afternoon, while out on a leisurely ride with his teammates during the rest day in Pau, a wasp had become entrapped in his sunglasses and stung him in the eye. Vaughters was allergic to wasp stings and by the time he had returned to the team hotel, his eye was the size of a golf ball. The pain was only beginning.
“The only thing that’s going to reduce that swelling is a cortisone injection which, as you know, is proscribed,” the team doctor announced. “Take it and you’ll test positive.”
Vaughters was distraught. “But that’s ridiculous . . . I can’t see! I can’t ride my bike! How will I finish the race?”
“I’m sorry Jonathan,” the doctor replied. “I can give you the injection but you will have to abandon the race. There are no exemptions for allergies. We have to do this by the book.”
“I understand,” Vaughters conceded, “but I’m not going to abandon. We’ll see how it is in the morning.”
Sleep did not come easily that night to the 29-year-old American. Here he was, trying to compete clean against rocket machines, juiced on (undetectable) EPO, growth hormone and testosterone and he was the guy at risk of being exposed as a cheat! The irony was sickening.
The morning brought no respite. He ate breakfast with his teammates, changed into his racing kit and stepped off the team coach in Pau looking like the Elephant Man. His Tour was effectively over but as a gesture to highlight the absurdity of the doping laws he had decided to sign-on as normal, line-up for the start, and climb off his bike as soon as the flag dropped.
As he made his way to the start line, aching with disappointment, he crossed the path of a chap he describes as “a famous rider”. Most of the other racers had greeted him with sympathy that morning but this particular rider didn’t do sympathy. No, his speciality was contempt.
“Poor Jonathan and his stupid little team,” he spat. “What the f*** are you like? If you were on my team this would have been taken care of, but now you are not going to finish the Tour de France because of a wasp sting.”
Vaughters was gutted.
“I thought, ‘F***! Here I am, on this team that is really trying to stick by the books and this guy is making fun of us for playing by the rules’,” he says. “My heart just left me after that. It just made me sad, just irrevocably sad. I raced [the following year] in 2002 but that was the moment that effectively ended my career. Phew! [sighs] I was done. I didn’t want to race any more. It just didn’t seem to matter to me after that.”
....
IT IS often said that before you judge a man, you should walk a mile in his shoes. I have walked that mile with Jonathan Vaughters; I have spent four days in his shoes but don’t ask me to judge him. And I definitely can’t explain him. We have returned to the pivotal moment of his career — the exchange with the famous rider in 2001 — and I’ve been wrestling with the word he used to describe how he felt.
“You used the word ‘sad’,” I observe.
“Yeah,” he replies.
“Not anger?”
“No.”
“There was no element of anger at all?”
“I’m not saying there was no element of anger but it was definitely more sad . . . yeah, I will stick to that.”
“No resentment?” I press.
He sighs.
“ . . . At the injustice of it all?”
“There was some, of course,” he replies, dispassionately. “The wasp sting really brought to a head a lot of the conflict I had going on inside of me. It really brought home the fact that, ‘Okay, maybe there just isn’t justice’.”
He crosses his legs and awaits the next question. The chime of a carriage clock fills the void. His calm is unnerving. What does it take, I wonder, to get Jonathan Vaughters mad?
I’m trying my best. The interview has entered its fifth hour and the discussion has turned to his experiences of doping.
“Did you have any first-hand experience of doping in the States?” I ask.
“No, not in the US,” he replies.
“Not at all?”
“No, racing in the States is much less . . . I mean half the guys you are racing against have full-time jobs. You know? It is much, much less demanding.”
“What about when you joined the US Postal Service team in 1998?”
“In ’98? Why do you need to know that?” he laughs.
“I need to know when you witnessed it first-hand,” I explain. “I’m asking whether it was in ’98 that you witnessed it first-hand.”
“I know,” he laughs. “And I am asking you: Why do you need to know that?”
“I would have thought it was a logical extension of what we have been talking about.”
“Well, no,” he disagrees. “Essentially, you are leading me down a path where I end up having to answer questions that I can’t back out of.”
“I’m not leading you down any path,” I counter. “I’m trying to explain how you founded Team Clean. I am asking you about your experiences of doping in cycling.”
“No, that’s totally understandable,” he concedes.
“I’m not asking you anything I didn’t ask Greg LeMond.”
“No, of course, and I wouldn’t expect that. I guess I would just say that my time at US Postal Service was . . . I kind of almost have to leave that as a ‘No comment’. And you can take that however you would like.”
“Okay, fine. You are painting me a picture and I’m reading between the lines.”
“And you’re welcome to read between the lines,” he says. “I’m completely okay with that.”
“My perception is that you doped.”
“You’re an intelligent person,” he smiles. “So your perception is . . . [laughs]”
“I want a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’.”
“I know you want a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’.”
“I want to know: Did you dope? I want to know: Why did you dope? And I want to know how you felt about doping?”
“And what I will tell you is that people are free to make the judgments they want out of my cycling career,” he insists.
“Jonathan, I don’t understand what your problem is here,” I reply, exasperated. “It’s a valid question. I’m not going to walk away from it.”
“I’m not asking you to walk away from it,” he says. “I can see that you are trying to establish a background and that’s fine but what I’m saying is that I’m just not going to talk about it and that’s it. You can take that however you want.”
......
By 1997, even Nunes had lost faith; Santa Clara went to the wall; Vaughters secured a contract with a small team in the US and rediscovered the joy of winning. “The racing domestically was just a thousand times easier. I won everything that year . . . the national time trial championship . . . the national racing calendar points series . . . I was the star rider of the domestic racing scene.”
A year later, he spent the first of two seasons with the US Postal team. He raced solidly in the first season and brilliantly in the second, delivering a stand-out performance to win the Mont Ventoux of the Dauphine race, a month before the Tour de France.
“That was a massive performance,” I suggest.
“Yes,” he replies.
“Did it feel massive? Did you feel happy?”
“I felt okay. I wasn’t ecstatic.”
“That doesn’t make sense?”
“Well, for sure, it was the best form of my life as a bike rider, but I wasn’t . . . I was just sort of . . . I will leave it at this; I wasn’t overly pleased with that victory. It was interesting to me. It answered a lot of questions. But it wasn’t the most ecstatic moment of my life by any means.”
In 2000, he left the US Postal service team for the French team, Credit Agricole. For the first time in six years, Vaughters had found his natural home. He liked the manager, Roger Legeay, and his way of doing business. The 18 months that followed were the happiest of his career . . . until the sting in the tale at Pau.
If you have not seen the article yet, you can find the full story here
Vaughters does not come out and implicate US Postal as being guilty of doping but Vaughters rode for very few teams and he does not speak badly of his times racing in the US or with the Santa Clara or Credit Agricole teams. As he says "read between the lines".
Below, I have exerpted key points of the story.
Jonathan Vaughters is telling me a story about the pivotal moment of his life as a professional cyclist. It happened on a sunny Tuesday morning in the city of Pau, as he prepared for the start of the 14th stage of the 2001 Tour de France. Spirits were high in the peloton that morning; the last of the high mountain peaks had been crossed two days before and there were just six stages to race before the chequered flag in Paris.
Vaughters had never made it to Paris. In 1999, his Tour debut, he had been brought down in a spectacular pile-up on the second stage. A year later, he crashed out again, overshooting a corner at speed on a descent in the Pyrenees. His third appearance in the race had been the best to date. He had experienced the thrill of winning (his team, Credit Agricole, had the team-time trial), survived the Alps and Pyrenees, and was nailed-on to make his first Tour finish.
And then, incredibly, the curse had struck again.
The previous afternoon, while out on a leisurely ride with his teammates during the rest day in Pau, a wasp had become entrapped in his sunglasses and stung him in the eye. Vaughters was allergic to wasp stings and by the time he had returned to the team hotel, his eye was the size of a golf ball. The pain was only beginning.
“The only thing that’s going to reduce that swelling is a cortisone injection which, as you know, is proscribed,” the team doctor announced. “Take it and you’ll test positive.”
Vaughters was distraught. “But that’s ridiculous . . . I can’t see! I can’t ride my bike! How will I finish the race?”
“I’m sorry Jonathan,” the doctor replied. “I can give you the injection but you will have to abandon the race. There are no exemptions for allergies. We have to do this by the book.”
“I understand,” Vaughters conceded, “but I’m not going to abandon. We’ll see how it is in the morning.”
Sleep did not come easily that night to the 29-year-old American. Here he was, trying to compete clean against rocket machines, juiced on (undetectable) EPO, growth hormone and testosterone and he was the guy at risk of being exposed as a cheat! The irony was sickening.
The morning brought no respite. He ate breakfast with his teammates, changed into his racing kit and stepped off the team coach in Pau looking like the Elephant Man. His Tour was effectively over but as a gesture to highlight the absurdity of the doping laws he had decided to sign-on as normal, line-up for the start, and climb off his bike as soon as the flag dropped.
As he made his way to the start line, aching with disappointment, he crossed the path of a chap he describes as “a famous rider”. Most of the other racers had greeted him with sympathy that morning but this particular rider didn’t do sympathy. No, his speciality was contempt.
“Poor Jonathan and his stupid little team,” he spat. “What the f*** are you like? If you were on my team this would have been taken care of, but now you are not going to finish the Tour de France because of a wasp sting.”
Vaughters was gutted.
“I thought, ‘F***! Here I am, on this team that is really trying to stick by the books and this guy is making fun of us for playing by the rules’,” he says. “My heart just left me after that. It just made me sad, just irrevocably sad. I raced [the following year] in 2002 but that was the moment that effectively ended my career. Phew! [sighs] I was done. I didn’t want to race any more. It just didn’t seem to matter to me after that.”
....
IT IS often said that before you judge a man, you should walk a mile in his shoes. I have walked that mile with Jonathan Vaughters; I have spent four days in his shoes but don’t ask me to judge him. And I definitely can’t explain him. We have returned to the pivotal moment of his career — the exchange with the famous rider in 2001 — and I’ve been wrestling with the word he used to describe how he felt.
“You used the word ‘sad’,” I observe.
“Yeah,” he replies.
“Not anger?”
“No.”
“There was no element of anger at all?”
“I’m not saying there was no element of anger but it was definitely more sad . . . yeah, I will stick to that.”
“No resentment?” I press.
He sighs.
“ . . . At the injustice of it all?”
“There was some, of course,” he replies, dispassionately. “The wasp sting really brought to a head a lot of the conflict I had going on inside of me. It really brought home the fact that, ‘Okay, maybe there just isn’t justice’.”
He crosses his legs and awaits the next question. The chime of a carriage clock fills the void. His calm is unnerving. What does it take, I wonder, to get Jonathan Vaughters mad?
I’m trying my best. The interview has entered its fifth hour and the discussion has turned to his experiences of doping.
“Did you have any first-hand experience of doping in the States?” I ask.
“No, not in the US,” he replies.
“Not at all?”
“No, racing in the States is much less . . . I mean half the guys you are racing against have full-time jobs. You know? It is much, much less demanding.”
“What about when you joined the US Postal Service team in 1998?”
“In ’98? Why do you need to know that?” he laughs.
“I need to know when you witnessed it first-hand,” I explain. “I’m asking whether it was in ’98 that you witnessed it first-hand.”
“I know,” he laughs. “And I am asking you: Why do you need to know that?”
“I would have thought it was a logical extension of what we have been talking about.”
“Well, no,” he disagrees. “Essentially, you are leading me down a path where I end up having to answer questions that I can’t back out of.”
“I’m not leading you down any path,” I counter. “I’m trying to explain how you founded Team Clean. I am asking you about your experiences of doping in cycling.”
“No, that’s totally understandable,” he concedes.
“I’m not asking you anything I didn’t ask Greg LeMond.”
“No, of course, and I wouldn’t expect that. I guess I would just say that my time at US Postal Service was . . . I kind of almost have to leave that as a ‘No comment’. And you can take that however you would like.”
“Okay, fine. You are painting me a picture and I’m reading between the lines.”
“And you’re welcome to read between the lines,” he says. “I’m completely okay with that.”
“My perception is that you doped.”
“You’re an intelligent person,” he smiles. “So your perception is . . . [laughs]”
“I want a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’.”
“I know you want a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’.”
“I want to know: Did you dope? I want to know: Why did you dope? And I want to know how you felt about doping?”
“And what I will tell you is that people are free to make the judgments they want out of my cycling career,” he insists.
“Jonathan, I don’t understand what your problem is here,” I reply, exasperated. “It’s a valid question. I’m not going to walk away from it.”
“I’m not asking you to walk away from it,” he says. “I can see that you are trying to establish a background and that’s fine but what I’m saying is that I’m just not going to talk about it and that’s it. You can take that however you want.”
......
By 1997, even Nunes had lost faith; Santa Clara went to the wall; Vaughters secured a contract with a small team in the US and rediscovered the joy of winning. “The racing domestically was just a thousand times easier. I won everything that year . . . the national time trial championship . . . the national racing calendar points series . . . I was the star rider of the domestic racing scene.”
A year later, he spent the first of two seasons with the US Postal team. He raced solidly in the first season and brilliantly in the second, delivering a stand-out performance to win the Mont Ventoux of the Dauphine race, a month before the Tour de France.
“That was a massive performance,” I suggest.
“Yes,” he replies.
“Did it feel massive? Did you feel happy?”
“I felt okay. I wasn’t ecstatic.”
“That doesn’t make sense?”
“Well, for sure, it was the best form of my life as a bike rider, but I wasn’t . . . I was just sort of . . . I will leave it at this; I wasn’t overly pleased with that victory. It was interesting to me. It answered a lot of questions. But it wasn’t the most ecstatic moment of my life by any means.”
In 2000, he left the US Postal service team for the French team, Credit Agricole. For the first time in six years, Vaughters had found his natural home. He liked the manager, Roger Legeay, and his way of doing business. The 18 months that followed were the happiest of his career . . . until the sting in the tale at Pau.
If you have not seen the article yet, you can find the full story here
1 Comments:
Good article. Very interesting. I had read something previously about how he regretting some decisions he made before, and wanted to start a clean team because of it.
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