Reading Tyler Hamilton’s book ‘The Secret Race’ earlier this year, I was hardly surprised to hear about an omerta in place in the peloton.
Basically, this was a code of silence, everyone knew the majority were doping, and so no one said anything on the subject.
It appears this was in place from the early to mid-1990s, right through to the Lance years.
According to Tyler Hamilton, there was another element to the code of silence, when someone tested positive, the whole peloton denounced them.
Hamilton described his treatment when he returned at the Tour of California, and approached Jens Voigt in the peloton for a chat.
However, Hamilton got nothing from Voigt, almost cold distance.
Now, Voigt has always maintained his cleanliness as a rider, so it may be this was just his belief that Hamilton should not have been allowed a place back in the peloton, but it seems that this denunciation was widespread.
The same seems to have happened with the Santambrogio positive. I quoted Jonathan Vaughters in my last article, and his tweet got me thinking:
“Good to see Santambrogio positive. Us dirty ol managers have known his performances were high risk for a while. Good to see system work.”
If the team managers knew his performances were suspect, why were no concerns raised?
Whether that would be through the UCI or through social networking sites such as Twitter remains to be seen, but it appears there was no public suggestion of foul play.
David Millar, a British rider on Vaughters’ Garmin-Sharp team, tweeted a similar sentiment:
“The peloton knew Vini Fantini weren’t trustworthy: was the talking point for the first week of the Giro (until misery & survival took over).”
If the peloton knew, and if it was as big a talking point as Millar is making out, surely raising the issue would have done no harm, maybe even prompted more tests, or a hotel search for Vini Fantini.
It appears that although we see cycling as cleaner, and the system is working, there does seem to be some sort of omerta between the peloton.
They seem to work on the basis that if a team is thought to be doping, they let the positive come out, and then denounce them, rather than raising the issue before the positive comes out.
One thing is for certain, the very public onslaught Santambrogio has endured definitely resembles the way convicted dopers were treated in the Lance years.
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