Irish cyclist Stephen Roche, who won the 1987 Tour de France, Giro d'Italia and World Championship, yesterday denied that he had ever used the performance enhancing substance erythropoetin (EPO).
"Never. Never," said Roche when asked directly yesterday if he had ever taken the drug. "I know I can sleep at night. I know in my heart and mind nothing can come back to haunt me because nothing is there. No one can produce anything," Roche added.
Roche was responding to reports in Italian newspapers where his name was linked to an ongoing Italian investigation into alleged abuse of EPO. Forty-year-old Roche was one of 22 household names thrown up by a state investigation into a Biomedics Research Centre in Ferrara, run by Professor Francesco Conconi, one-time team doctor with the Carrera team for which Roche rode in the mid 1980s and early '90s.
Extensive media leaks, in particular to the Rome-based daily La Republica, suggest that Ferrara-based state prosecutor Pierguido Soprani has discovered files in Conconi's laboratory detailing extensive use of EPO by a number of top athletes under his care. Among others named are 1998 Tour de France and Giro d'Italia winner Marco Pantani as well as former cycling World champions Gianni Bugno and Maurizio Fondriest.
EPO is the drug at the centre of the scandal which marred the 1998 Tour de France, resulting in the disqualification of the entire Festina team. Put simply, EPO increases an athlete's red blood cell level thus enabling the athlete to absorb and convert ever more oxygen into raw athletic power and energy. "Conconi may have looked at my blood tests and that could be why my name is on the list," said Roche. "He was always interested in my tests because I tested very similar to Eddy Merckx in the VO2 max tests (tests which measure the efficiency of the body's use of oxygen). It's something everybody does. I never did anything that was organised with Conconi. I was never part of an experiment or anything else with him.
"I don't think Conconi can say or prove I was involved in anything. One side of me is saying `Stephen you are above all of this. There is nothing there', but the papers are saying Conconi was involved in a programme - what programme?
"People are jumping to conclusions. It is worrying and I will be looking into it. Not publicly. But I want to know what sort of list it was and what experiments were involved because I took part in nothing."
State investigator Soprani believes that Conconi may himself have inadvertently blown the whistle on his use of EPO in the course of an address to a symposium on doping in sport, held in Norway in 1993, where he referred to the use of EPO in tests that were allegedly carried out on 22 amateur athletes between the ages of 20 and 57.
However, subsequent investigation into private files produced almost identical medical data and information in reference to 23 professional athletes between the age of 20 and 35. Several of the athletes named in this latter file appear under different codenames. Stephen Roche, for example, is sometimes referred to as Roche and other times as "Rocchi", "Rocca", "Roncati", "Righi" and "Rossini". For the time being, it is unclear as to which period of Roche's career the Ferrara investigation may be referring, but the Norwegian symposium would suggest that it refers to the '90s and not the '80s, the period of Roche's greatest triumphs.
"Of course I am surprised at my name appearing," said Roche. "I'm not so much going to take legal advice but take advice on what to do next. At the end of the day, it is probably better to take action against Conconi. He was never my team doctor. Grazzi (Giovanni) was the team doctor with Carrera. I'd no association with Conconi."
Grazzi, however, was an assistant to Conconi and and was based at the University of Ferrara. He then became the Ferrera team doctor in 1992 when Roche was a member.
"It is sad to see it coming out like this. I know in my mind nothing can come out to hurt me. It is frustrating but there is nothing to say I took EPO. My haemocrit levels (an indication of the number of red blood cells in the blood) were never beyond the illegal limit of 50 per cent. That is the way it is. What can you do? Sean Kelly tested positive twice and his image is still intact . . . whether you take it or not people are always suspicious," said Roche.
Heightening the sense of public concern generated by the Ferrara inquiry is that for many years, Conconi's centre received an annual subsidy from CONI, the Italian sports federation.
