{"id":149365,"date":"2025-06-01T11:50:13","date_gmt":"2025-06-01T11:50:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/149365\/"},"modified":"2025-06-01T11:50:13","modified_gmt":"2025-06-01T11:50:13","slug":"why-do-so-many-cyclists-fall-apart-when-they-retire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/149365\/","title":{"rendered":"Why do so many cyclists fall apart when they retire?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Marco Pantani never called cocaine by its proper name. To him, it was just la roba \u2014 the stuff \u2014 and in the final month of his life, he spent \u20ac20,000 on the drug. Bruised and alone in a hotel room in the Italian coastal city of Rimini, the door barricaded by a pile of furniture, he sniffed it and he ate it and he rubbed it into his gums. <\/p>\n

When he died, aged 34, at 5pm on February 14, 2004, his body contained six times the lethal dose of cocaine. Save for a fine layer that covered every flat surface in the room, Pantani had taken the lot. The only real morsel of la roba that remained was found inside his mouth, ground into a ball with breadcrumbs. <\/p>\n

As the doctor who conducted Pantani\u2019s autopsy told his biographer, Matt Rendell, to die from cocaine consumption requires a lot of time and a lot of money. \u201cIt was an ugly death,\u201d he said. And it was part of a pattern. There were five leading talents who came of age in the 1990s: Mario Cipollini, a sprinter; Pantani, a climber; Frank Vandenbroucke, an all-rounder; and the perennial Tour de France<\/a> rivals, Jan Ullrich and Lance Armstrong. In one way or another, all of them have since come undone.<\/p>\n

\"Former<\/p>\n

Ullrich was visited by his old rival Armstrong when he went to a rehab clinic<\/p>\n

EDDY RISCH\/EPA<\/p>\n

In 2022, Cipollini was sentenced to three years in prison for abusing his ex-wife. In 2009, after twice attempting suicide and years of addiction to amphetamines and sleeping pills, Vandenbroucke died of a pulmonary embolism in a hotel room in Senegal aged 34. \u201cI don\u2019t know if Pantani really wanted to die,\u201d he said in 2007. \u201cBut he was broken, at least \u2014 just like me.\u201d <\/p>\n

Ullrich, too, has fought addiction. En route to rehab in Bad Br\u00fcckenau in 2018, after months of degenerating in his Mallorcan villa \u2014 paranoid, shooting his television with an air rifle \u2014 he was arrested when he became violent with an escort in a Frankfurt hotel. After a week at the clinic, Armstrong arrived to support his old adversary. It is a curiosity that the man whose sporting crimes were judged the most severe has coped the best with retirement. <\/p>\n

Like the majority of professional cyclists during the 1990s and 2000s, all of those men doped and all of them lied. From an era of drug use and deception, it seems natural that there would be a toll. But the problems endured into a different era. <\/p>\n

Sir Bradley Wiggins, the 2012 Tour de France winner, admitted recently that his family feared for his life after he became addicted to cocaine in retirement<\/a>. A day later, the two-times time-trial world champion Rohan Dennis was given a 17-month suspended prison sentence for his part in the death of his wife Melissa Hoskins. \u201cI believe this is a tragic accident,\u201d her mother said in April. \u201cYour temper is your downfall and needs to be addressed.\u201d <\/p>\n

What is it, then, about cycling? Why do so many cyclists fall apart? <\/p>\n

\":<\/p>\n

Armstrong appears to have coped well with retirement \u2014 despite being judged as the worst offender during his career<\/p>\n

LUCAS JACKSON\/REUTERS<\/p>\n

Scarred risk-seekers<\/p>\n

In his essay Moments of Doubt, the great mountaineering writer David Roberts describes how a childhood friend, Gabe, whose father had recently died in a car accident, turned his grief quickly to obsession. \u201cI mumbled my prepared condolence,\u201d Roberts writes. \u201cHe brushed it off and asked at once when we could go climbing.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt 18, it wasn\u2019t easy to see why he had suddenly become good at climbing, or why it drove him as nothing else had.\u201d But this arc has grown familiar: a child, wounded somehow, pours all of themselves into sport (or education, or worse). For a time at least, it appears to return the validation that they are missing. Among cyclists, it is an old story. Wiggins\u2019s father, an Australian bike racer, left the family home when his son was two and, in 2008, he was found dead at a party. When he was 12, Wiggins was abused by a coach. Armstrong never knew his birth father and was beaten by his stepdad. <\/p>\n

It cost Roberts\u2019s friend his life. That summer he fell 600ft (182m) on the Colorado Flatirons. Cycling may not be quite so perilous as mountaineering, but it attracts the same types: risk-takers in need of the oblivion that obsession can provide. Jonathan Vaughters knows these people. He rode on the US Postal Service team with Armstrong. He raced against Pantani and Vandenbroucke and Cipollini; he brought Wiggins to Garmin-Slipstream in 2009; and, he admits, he is one of them himself.<\/p>\n

There are risks inherent to the pursuit of any sporting career: the overwhelming likelihood that you will fail, and the accompanying chance of being cut adrift at the age of 25 without skills or prospects. But at the heart of cycling is a paradox, unmatched \u2014 among mainstream sports, at least \u2014 in the damage it has caused: to be successful requires both unyielding self-control and a tolerance for danger that borders on the idiotic. Last year alone, two riders lost their lives in high-profile races. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a risk in every single turn in the road,\u201d says Vaughters, now the chief executive of EF Pro Cycling. \u201cThe crashes can be fatal and are often very close to fatal. But it also involves massive amounts of training. Every minute of your day is managed. You have someone who\u2019s willing to live an incredibly regimented lifestyle and to take unbelievable risks with their life on a daily basis.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe actual physical workload \u2014 the amount of calories you\u2019re chewing up and how many miles you\u2019re putting on your body \u2014 is going to be a lot lower in almost any other sport. Boxing is the only comparable sport I\u2019ve seen to cycling, when it comes to chewing up the human body and psyche.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Mario<\/p>\n

Cipollini, left, and Pantani celebrate on the podium after a Giro d\u2019\u2019Italia stage in 2001<\/p>\n

YUZURU SUNADA\/GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n

Nurturing single-mindedness<\/p>\n

Two and a half years after he was pulled from the race lead of the 1999 Giro d\u2019Italia, Marco Pantani was sent for psychiatric tests in a bid to address his cocaine addiction.<\/p>\n

Pantani, then 31, was not ready to give up on life as a bike racer. He left the Giro on the back of consecutive stage wins by more than a minute, his red-blood cell volume having breached the 50 per cent limit that acted as a marker for erythropoietin (EPO) use before a test had been devised. After that late spring day at Madonna di Campiglio, he mustered only two further victories, both in the 2000 Tour de France. <\/p>\n

The psychiatrist, Dr Mario Pissacroia, diagnosed \u201cnon-specific personality disorder with narcissistic, antisocial and obsessive elements, frequent use of denial and manipulation\u201d and noted his \u201cneed for admiration and a lack of empathy\u201d. <\/p>\n

In his superb biography, The Death of Marco Pantani, Rendell identifies the contradiction of the diagnosis. Pantani was reckless, remorseless, obsessive; he was a perfectionist, preoccupied by \u201cmental and interpersonal control, at the expense of flexibility, openness and efficiency, beginning in early adulthood\u201d. For an office worker, those would be disastrous qualities \u2014 but to a cyclist? In 2001? It could have been a checklist: tick these off for entry to the elite. <\/p>\n

\u201cPerfectionism, narcissism, impulsivity and, from the opposite side, emotional overcontrol \u2014 they can help the riders be more present, more consistent, perform under pressure,\u201d says Elisabetta Borgia, a sports psychologist for Lidl-Trek. \u201cBut if we go too high, too rigidly, they can increase their vulnerabilities in the long term.\u201d Lidl-Trek now monitor their athletes for any signs that these traits are becoming exaggerated. <\/p>\n

\u201cAddictions are dysfunctional ways to deal with unpleasant emotions and if we look at obsessive athletes, sometimes obsession is a way to deal with anxiety,\u201d Borgia continues. \u201cThey plan everything to have the feeling of more control . . . in my experience [for] those who want to control everything, long term the risk is total loss of control. The focus is so strong it is unsustainable.\u201d <\/p>\n

In Dennis\u2019s trial, the judge noted that he and his wife had agreed that he should leave the house to calm down during arguments, because of the \u201csingle-mindedness\u201d which had made the pair world champions. This single-mindedness is not hard to detect in the circumstances of her death: after an argument about home renovations, Hoskins lay on the bonnet of Dennis\u2019s car; he drove on, and then, thinking she had at last given up and let go, \u201caccelerated down the street\u2026 it was then that she fell and lost her life\u201d. <\/p>\n

\"Hour<\/p>\n

Dennis, a two-times time-trial world champion, was given a 17-month suspended sentence for his part in the death of his wife<\/p>\n

MARCEL BIERI\/EPA<\/p>\n

Cycling has a lower skill component than, say, tennis \u2014 another arduous, individual sport \u2014 but the onus on pure conditioning is greater. Every ounce of food and minute of sleep and hour of training \u2014 40,000km and more a year \u2014 accumulates to create a champion. \u201cYou need to have everything in your life structured around what\u2019s best for you,\u201d Vaughters says. \u201cYour brain becomes structured into thinking, \u2018To maximize my performance, I need the world to rotate around me.\u2019 It\u2019s the definition of anti-social, narcissistic.\u201d Nor are there team-mates to dampen this egocentricity. Beyond camps, riders often train alone. <\/b>\u201cThe people who can tolerate that, or maybe even enjoy that, can be a little weird.\u201d <\/p>\n

The sports psychologist Jef Brouwers \u2014 who worked with Vandenbroucke through the tumultuous decade that followed the Belgian\u2019s arrest, in a drugs case, by French police in 1999 \u2014 believes that the degree of care offered to athletes presents a problem. \u201cThey don\u2019t have to live,\u201d he says, \u201cand then they come into real society and they don\u2019t always know how to live. So it\u2019s very important to prepare your brain for stopping, to be able to go to that transition.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vandenbroucke\u2019s second wife, Sarah Pinacci, whom he met at the Vuelta a Espana in 1999, told the Belgian broadcaster VRT of her initial confusion at what was expected from a cyclist\u2019s partner. \u201cI didn\u2019t understand so much that it was really like a job,\u201d she said, \u201ccaring for someone from morning to night, 24 hours a day, as you\u2019d do with a baby.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"CYCLISME-TOUR<\/p>\n

Being married to Vandenbroucke was like caring for a baby, according to his second wife<\/p>\n

PASCAL PAVANI\/AFP<\/p>\n

And then\u2026<\/b> the end<\/p>\n

Childlike, too, is the obedience \u2014 and the trust \u2014 required of a Tour de France contender. Today, they have to observe strict parameters for power output, for grams of carbohydrates per hour and heart-rate zones. In the 1990s, they were expected to take performance-enhancing drugs. \u201cImagine you\u2019re Pantani,\u201d Vaughters says. \u201cYou\u2019re doing exactly what they\u2019re telling you to do \u2014 all of your coaches and trainers and doctors \u2014 and then one day, the police show up and say, \u2018Well, actually, what you were doing for the last ten years was reprehensible.\u2019 Where do you start?<\/p>\n

\u201cMost professional riders were probably committed to their training in a very obsessive way by the time they were 15 years old. How do you backtrack out of that and say, \u2018Oh, OK, I made a few mistakes and now I\u2019m going to move forward in my life.\u2019 My generation of cyclists, which is ten years before Brad, the number of riders that have died from suicide or drug overdose to just heart attacks, it\u2019s pretty intense.\u201d<\/p>\n

The end for Wiggins was not simple either. In the years after his victory at the Tour de France, it emerged that he had received injections of the corticosteroid triamcinolone in 2011, 2012 and 2013 before major races. Although he had therapeutic use exemptions for all three, even Shane Sutton, Wiggins\u2019s coach at the time, has called them \u201cunethical\u201d.<\/p>\n

There was also the \u201cJiffy bag\u201d incident, in which a medical package was delivered to Richard Freeman \u2014 then the doctor for Team Sky, who later received a four-year ban from all sport for violating anti-doping rules \u2014 at the 2011 Crit\u00e9rium du Dauphin\u00e9, a race Wiggins won in the Alps. Wiggins has always denied wrongdoing, but from the broad adulation of winning BBC Sports Personality of the year in 2012, he descended first into this cloud, then into the tedium of retirement. <\/p>\n

In 2017, a year after he quit cycling, Wiggins flirted with becoming a rower. Four years later, he told The Times that he wanted to redefine himself by becoming a medical doctor. \u201cBrad is an intense person,\u201d Vaughters says. \u201cHe\u2019s very gifted intellectually and his whole life had been based around chasing the buzz of winning races. He succeeded with all that. When it comes to an end, life\u2019s pretty boring.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"British<\/p>\n

Wiggins considered a career as a rower after his retirement from cycling<\/p>\n

SHUTTERSTOCK EDITORIAL<\/p>\n

Nine years after retiring, Wiggins has lost his \u00a3975,000 family home. He has fallen into debt. His marriage has collapsed and he was forced into sofa-surfing. In this respect, Armstrong, who was part of a private fund that invested early in Uber, was lucky. \u201cBrad didn\u2019t really have a safety net,\u201d Vaughters says. \u201cPantani didn\u2019t really have a safety net. Lance had a pretty cushy safety net. It\u2019s a lot easier to deal with big psychological issues if you can afford the therapy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hope for the future <\/p>\n

Brouwers witnessed the hard years of substance abuse throughout the peloton. He saw the worst of what addiction can do to a person. As armed police circled Vandenbroucke\u2019s house in July 2004, concerned at the threat he posed to his wife, it was Brouwers on the phone persuading him to set down his hunting rifle. <\/p>\n

He regularly answered his phone and his door to Vandenbroucke in the dead of night, to talk him down from various degrees of distress. In the final months of Pantani\u2019s life, Vandenbroucke tried to convince him to speak to Brouwers too. By then, Pantani was \u201ccompletely underground\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cPantani was one of his friends,\u201d Brouwers says. But in those days, true friendship, among team-mates particularly, was hard to come by. \u201cEverything was for the leader,\u201d he says. The atmosphere was hierarchical, often obsequious. For the athletes to whom this sycophancy was paid, reality \u2014 a world beyond cycling \u2014 was all the more difficult to comprehend.<\/p>\n

Still, he is not without hope. He sees a changing sport, where recreational drug use has decreased and a different ethic has taken hold. \u201cNow you have to be a real team worker,\u201d he says. \u201cYou see Wout van Aert in the near past [working for his team-mates]. We see it with [Mathieu] van der Poel. There is much more respect for team-work. That is how it is in society: you have to do something, but you cannot do it alone. The emotional intelligence, the social intelligence in cycling is growing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Marco Pantani never called cocaine by its proper name. To him, it was just la roba \u2014 the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":149366,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4104],"tags":[4230,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-149365","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-cycling","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114607962517562569","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149365\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/149366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}