Doping Quotes

“Does it make sense to boycott ourselves? Does it hold water to boycott the fluid course of our life? Is it consistent to commit self-sabotage by destroying wittingly our corporeal and mental structure?
Those are the questions thousands of people may ask as they are confronted with the schizophrenic dilemma on the point of smoking, boozing, doping, sexual transgressing or environmental polluting. Many seem to be aware of their problem. Many have decided to stop from tomorrow on. But when tomorrow and after tomorrow come many tend to let slip their vow and their self-sabotage goes on to rule their life. Their dissonant behavior transforms them into social losers or hopeless patsies and depresses them into the class of forlorn pariahs. They realize, as such, that self-handicapping makes no sense, but are not able to protect themselves from themselves since they haven’t got the muscle to live down the spell of addiction.
Thousands of people may feel having set the bar too high and recognize they are are failing to find the right angle and are missing sufficient insight to steer their life.
If, however, they decide to give it a try they should be aware that the road may be very bumpy and that they have to be prepared for disappointments and regressions, that they might have to deal with very slowly crescent improvements, that they shouldn’t take themselves for a ride and that they could only possibly succeed by focusing painfully on the path to breaking free from the hornet's nest they have got themselves into.”
― Erik Pevernagie

“I discovered when I went all out, when I put 100 percent of my energy into some intense, impossible task - when my heart was jack-hammering, when lactic acid was sizzling through my muscles - that's when I felt good, normal, balanced.”
― Tyler Hamilton, The Secret Race: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour de France: Doping, Cover-ups, and Winning at All Costs

“People think doping is for lazy people who want to avoid hard work. That might be true in some cases, but in mine, as with many riders I knew, it was precisely the opposite. EPO granted the ability to suffer more; to push yourself farther and harder than you'd ever imagined, in both training and racing.”
― Daniel Coyle, The Secret Race: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour de France: Doping, Cover-ups, and Winning at All Costs

“One day I'm a normal person with a normal life,” he said. “The next I'm standing on a street corner in Madrid with a secret phone and a hole in my arm and I'm bleeding all over, hoping I don't get arrested. It was completely crazy. But it seemed like the only way at the time.”
― Tyler Hamilton, The Secret Race: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour de France: Doping, Cover-ups, and Winning at All Costs

“I'd just killed some of the best riders in the world - and I was clean. I'd taken nothing - no EPO, no cortisone, no testosterone, no painkillers, no caffeine. I had justified to myself that I was a great rider without drugs - yet perversely given myself the green light to dope again. I'd proved what I could do clean - how much more could I do if I was doped?”
― David Millar, Racing Through the Dark

“I was not a doper, I told myself - I just injected myself to recover and needed pills to sleep.”
― David Millar, Racing Through the Dark

“I might have changed, but that did not mean the sport had.”
― David Millar, Racing Through the Dark

“Preparation was a term I was to hear more and more. It had another more sinister meaning. If you were prepared, it meant you were doped.”
― David Millar, Racing Through the Dark

“If the riders, governing bodies, teams, race organisers and media weren't doing anything about it, then what the hell could I, a 20-year-old neo-pro from Scotland, do about it?”
― David Millar, Racing Through the Dark

“One group of riders doped, the others alongside them racing clean. You can work out for yourselves which group was fastest.”
― David Millar, Racing Through the Dark

“I had grown used to getting a pat on the back and being told after a good result: 'Well done, David - you should be happy, you're the first clean rider.”
― David Millar, Racing Through the Dark

“Nothing was being done to help the non-dopers, to encourage or support them. Even the clean riders like myself and Moncout knew how easy it was to cheat the tests.”
― David Millar, Racing Through the Dark

“It was very quiet at the hotel, as if there had been a death in the family. When you have quit the Tour, nobody really knows what to say or do. (...) Everything I'd previously achieved meant nothing; all I was now was a pro rider who couldn't finish the Tour de France.”
― David Millar, Racing Through the Dark