There have been allegations of doping in the Tour de France since the race began in 1903. Early Tour riders consumed alcohol and used ether, among other substances, as a means of dulling the pain of competing in endurance cycling.https://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/tg/feature/-/187085/202-7384003-1751816As History, Drugs and the Tour de France by Tim Moore Riders began using substances as a means of increasing performance rather than dulling the senses, and organizing bodies such as the Tour and the International Cycling Union (UCI), as well as government bodies, enacted policies to combat the practice.

Use of performance-enhancing drugs in cycling predates the Tour de France. Cycling, having been from the start a sport of extremes, whether of speed by being paced by tandems, motorcycles and even cars, or of distance, the suffering involved encouraged the means to alleviate it. Not until after World War II were sporting or even particularly health issues raised. Those came shortly before the death of Tom Simpson in the Tour de France of 1967. Max Novich referred to the Tour de France in a 1973 issue of New York State Journal of Medicine as "a cycling nightmare".Novich, Max M: Drug abuse and drugs in sports, New York State Journal of Medicine, vol 73, no 21, 1 November 1973 Journalist Hans Halter wrote in 1998 that "For as long as the Tour has existed, since 1903, its participants have been doping themselves. For 60 years doping was allowed. For the past 30 years it has been officially prohibited. Yet the fact remains; great cyclists have been doping themselves, then and now."Halter, Hans: 'Alles verstehen, alles verzeihen', Der Spiegel, Germany 3 August 1998

Early doping in cycling

Drug-taking in cycling predates the Tour de France. "It existed, it has always existed", said the French reporter and author, Pierre Chany, who followed 49 Tours before his death in 1996.Penot, Christophe: Pierre Chany, l'homme aux 50 Tours de France, Éditions Cristel, France, 1996 The exhaustion of six-day races on the track was countered by the riders' soigneurs (the French word for "carer"), helpers akin to seconds in boxing. Among the treatments they supplied was nitroglycerine, a drug used to stimulate the heart after cardiac attacks and which was credited with improving riders' breathing.Novich, Max M., Abbotempo, UK, 1964 Riders suffered hallucinations from the exhaustion and perhaps the drugs. The American champion Major Taylor refused to continue the New York race, saying: "I cannot go on with safety, for there is a man chasing me around the ring with a knife in his hand."Bearings, US, 24 December 1896, cited Ritchie, Andrew, Major Taylor, Bicycle Books, US, 1988

Also used was strychnine, which in small doses tightened tired muscles. A track rider of the era said he had developed such a tolerance to the drug that he took doses large enough to kill smaller men.Woodland, Les (1980) Dope, the use of drugs in sport, David and Charles, UK The use of strychnine, far from being banned, was thought necessary to survive demanding races, says the sports historian Alain Lunzenfichter.Lunzenfichter, Alain: C'est pas du Jeu!, L'Équipe, France, 10 December 2007

The American specialist in doping, Max M. Novich, wrote: "Trainers of the old school who supplied treatments which had cocaine as their base declared with assurance that a rider tired by a six-day race would get his second breath after absorbing these mixtures."Novich, ibid. Cited De Mondenard, Dr Jean-Pierre: Dopage, l'imposture des performances, Chiron, France, 2000 John Hoberman, a professor at the University of Texas in Austin, Texas, said six-day races were "de facto experiments investigating the physiology of stress as well as the substances that might alleviate exhaustion."Hoberman, John; "Dopers on Wheels: The Tour's sorry history". Retrieved December 2007

The first backers of races on the road were newspapers. Although Le Vélocipède Illustré, which was behind the world's first long-distance road race in November 1869, said its purpose was "to further the good cause of the bicycle" because "it must be determined that the bicycle can be raced over considerable distances with incomparably less fatigue than running",Le Vélocipède Illustré, Paris, 1 April 1869 backing the race would also boost the newspaper's sales. In an era before radio and television, newspapers could build the drama of a race for weeks, rely on customers buying a further copy on the day to prepare for the riders to pass and then another next day to see what had become of them. Few people had travelled 130 km, at least not often, and the idea of doing it by bicycle and at as high a speed as possible when the roads were potholed and bicycles had wooden wheels and metal tyres was exciting. The result was that newspapers outdid each other in promotions. In 1891 came a race from Bordeaux to Paris. In the same year, Le Petit Journal went twice as far by running Paris–Brest–Paris over 1,200 km.

During a meeting at L'Auto in Paris, journalist Géo Lefèvre suggested a race right round France, not just one day but six, "like the six-day races on the track."Chany, Pierre: La Fabuleuse Histoire du Tour de France, Éditions La Martinière, France, 1988 The idea of bringing the excess of the indoors to the roads of the outdoors was born. And with it came the practices which had seen riders through their suffering.

1903–1940s: Doping As Acceptable Means The strongest drug in the early Tour de France was strychnine. Other than that, riders would take anything to survive the tedium, the pain and the exhaustion of stages that could last more than 300 km. That included alcohol, which was already strong in French culture and sometimes purer than water after World War I destroyed water pipes and polluted water tables, and ether. There are photographs of riders holding ether-soaked handkerchiefs to their mouths, or leaving them knotted under the chin so the fumes would deaden the pain in their legs.Coups de Pédales, Belgium, 2006 The smell, enough to turn a man's stomach said Pierre Chany,Penot, Christophe (1996) Pierre Chany, l'homme aux 50 Tours de France, Éditions Cristel, France discouraged some but also showed the extent of suffering by others. Roger Lapébie, winner of the Tour in 1937, said he smelled ether "in the bunch near the finish; it used to be taken in a little bottle called a topette."Tour Guide, UK, 1992 Its use lasted decades; riders were caught using it as late as 1963.

The acceptance of drug-taking in the Tour de France was so complete by 1930, when the race changed to national teams that were to be paid for by the organisers, that the rule book distributed to riders by the organiser, Henri Desgrange, reminded them that drugs were not among items with which they would be provided.Maso, Benji:Zweet van de Goden, Holland In a 1949 interview with Fausto Coppi, the 1949 and 1952 Tour winner, he admitted to amphetamine use and said "those who claim [that cyclists do not take amphetamine], it's not worth talking to them about cycling".Archive extract from Quando Volava l'Airone, part of a programme called Format, Rai Tre television, 1998

The Convicts of the Road In 1924 the journalist Albert Londres followed the Tour de France for the French newspaper, Le Petit Parisien. At Coutances he heard that the previous year's winner, Henri Pélissier, his brother Francis and a third rider, Maurice Ville, had pulled out after a row with the organiser, Henri Desgrange. Henri Pélissier explained the problem – whether or not he had the right to take off a jersey – and went on to talk of drugs, reported in Londres' race diary, in which he coined the phrase Les Forçats de la Route (The Convicts of the Road):

"You have no idea what the Tour de France is", Henri said. "It's a Calvary. Worse than that, because the road to the Cross has only 14 stations and ours has 15. We suffer from the start to the end. You want to know how we keep going? Here..." He pulled a phial from his bag. "That's cocaine, for our eyes. This is chloroform, for our gums."

"This", Ville said, emptying his shoulder bag "is liniment to put warmth back into our knees."

"And pills. Do you want to see pills? Have a look, here are the pills." Each pulled out three boxes.

"The truth is", Francis said, "that we keep going on dynamite."

Henri spoke of being as white as shrouds once the dirt of the day had been washed off, then of their bodies being drained by diarrhoea, before continuing:

"At night, in our rooms, we can't sleep. We twitch and dance and jig about as though we were doing St Vitus's Dance..."

"There's less flesh on our bodies than on a skeleton", Francis said.Londres, Albert: Les frères Pélissier et leur camarade Ville abandonnent, Le Petit Parisien, 27 June 1924, France

Francis Pélissier said much later: "Londres was a famous reporter but he didn't know about cycling. We kidded him a bit with our cocaine and our pills. Even so, the Tour de France in 1924 was no picnic."Woodland, Les Yellow Jersey Guide to the Tour de France, Yellow Jersey, LondonDe Mondenard, Dr Jean-Pierre: Dopage, l'imposture des performances, Chiron, France, 2000

1950s–1960s: Early anti-doping stance Pierre Dumas was the first doctor to campaign for the testing and suppression of doping, both within cycling and then at international level at the Olympic Games. Dumas came to the Tour de France in 1952 when the original doctor pulled out. Dumas was a judoka rather than a cyclist and had none of the preconceptions established in cycling. He discovered a world in which "there were soigneurs, fakirs, who came from the six-days. Their value was in the contents of their case. Riders took anything they were given, even bee stings and toad extract." He spoke of "medicine from the heart of Africa... healers laying on hands or giving out irradiating balms, feet plunged into unbelievable mixtures which could lead to eczema, so-called magnetised diets and everything else you could imagine. In 1953 and 1954 it was all magic, medicine and sorcery. After that, they started reading Vidal [the French medicine directory]."Council of Europe report, cited: Yellow Jersey Guide to the Tour de France, Les Woodland, Yellow Jersey, London

Such was the extent to which stronger drugs entered cycling that the French team manager, Marcel Bidot, was cited to an inquiry by the Council of Europe as saying: "Three-quarters of riders were doped. I am well placed to know that since I visited their rooms each evening during the Tour. I always left frightened after these visits." At the 1956 Tour, it was evident how much drug-taking and the "care" of riders had changed. After stage 14, all members of the Belgian team chose to abandon the race following a "mystery illness". Insiders suspected doping usage as the real reason, while the team attributed the illness to a dinner of 'bad fish' they had eaten,Association of British Cycling Coaches (ABCC), Drugs and the Tour De France by Ramin Minovi an excuse which was reused in both 1962 and 1991.

In 1960, Pierre Dumas walked into a hotel bedroom on his nightly tour of teams to find eventual winner Gastone Nencini prone on his bed with a plastic tube running from each arm to a bottle containing hormones.Jean-Pierre de Mondenard, "Dictionnaire du dopage" (2004), p.896 However, the hormone injection was not illegal at the time, and indeed only few were disqualified or sanctioned whenever they were found out to use doping.

Malléjac incident