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Museeuw calls for doping confessions from past riders

By Cycling News

published 6 September 2012

Cycling “must break with the hyprocrisy” around doping

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Johan Museeuw digd deep on the way to victory in 2002(Image credit: AFP)

Johan Museeuw pushed back the years(Image credit: Bettini Photo)

Johan Museeuw was also at the Quick Step hotel, where a collector asked him to sign an old photo. The man explained that one could buy it for 10 euro(Image credit: Brecht Decaluwé)

Johan Museeuw attacked on the smooth Tenbosse then stretched his lead over the Muur and Bosberg to win in 1998.(Image credit: Sirotti)

Johan Museeuw celebrates in 2000 after crash and knee injury almost ended his career two years earlier(Image credit: Fotoreporter Sirotti)

Doping and EPO were established in the peloton in the 1980s and 1990s, says Johan Museeuw, who has called on his former colleagues to confess their doping. The Belgian has in the past acknowledged his own doping use during his successful career.

"I am the first to admit it openly, and perhaps many people will blame me that I break the silence, but it must be: virtually everyone took doping at that time,” he told the Gazet van Antwerpen.

"We must break with the hypocrisy. The only way to come out of that murderous spiral is to break the silence, the silence that continues to haunt us.”

Everyone must confess to their part, he said. “If we do not then the borrowing into the past will continue. Only a collective mea culpa is the way to the future.”

Doping was a fact of life at that period, he said. “In the 80s and 90s everyone knew what each other was doing but never said a word about doping. Using doping was something everyone did. Eventually it became a part of your lifestyle."

But the peloton is cleaner now, he said. “Because it 'is' better, now. Never before has racing been so clean, I'm sure. But that data is completely snowed under” since many of those involved refused to tell the truth about “the things that went wrong in the past. The omerta of the past prevents cycling from now starting again with a clean slate."

Museeuw rode professionally from 1988 to 2004. Among his many victories, he won both Paris-Roubaix and the Tour of Flanders three times each.