Yuri Elizarov is 1st row on the left. No less than 3 future World Champions in this shot plus a top 10 Tour and Giro finisher.

One day in June this year, a group of middle age men will simultaneously come to Kiev from different parts of Ukraine and Russia. By only looking at them, no one would ever guess they have anything in common except their age. Some of them will arrive in bulletproof Mercedes Benzes while others will ask someone else to give them a lift to where they’re going. One by one, they’ll roll in to one of Kiev’s cemeteries and gather around the grave of 1990 TTT World Champion, Oleg Galkin. Several vodka bottles will be opened at once and the standard, 200mL glasses will be filled with the Russian national beverage to the brim. “Sleep in peace, Oleg” someone will say and keeping with the cultural customs, without the traditional touching of another’s glass, they will be emptied in one go in deafening silence. Only then, greetings and conversations will begin and the second round of drinks will immediately follow.

They’ve been gathering like this for many years now. They’re not army veterans or survivors of some monumental injustice. They’re former bike racers. One thing they have in common, the thing that makes them come to this cemetery every year is that at some point in their racing careers, they’ve been part of an ambitious Titan project. The day Titan was officially launched in Kiev in 1982 is the day these guys meet together every year to commemorate that.

It may seem like a strange tradition. After all, they’re just former cycling team-mates, what’s a big deal? They haven’t looked into the face of death, they shared no affliction and common anguish wasn’t something they’ve experienced. And yet, the many hundreds of hours they spent together on the road, on the plane, in countless hotels, the team bus and in the team cars, formed a special bond, some kind of connection that withstood the harshest test of them all – time. Just like adversities of war mould certain relationships between human beings afflicted by it, so did road cycling, dressed in aspirations and an incredible drive for success of Titan’s founder, Yuri Elizarov. They have become, in some loose sense, the band of brothers. Incredibly, 30 years later, they still are the same band.

Titan’s Tales is their story.

The winner is somewhere there (Source: Bryn Lennon/Getty Images)

Imagine this with me for a second – Andy Schleck never wins Tour de France during his career. Many years from now, having a party at his place with family and friends, one of his kids comes up to him and says, “Dad, did you really win Tour de France when you were young?” What is he going to say? “Yes I did but, you see…”

I wonder what Bjarne Riis has told his kids about his win in 1996. Even though the UCI asked him to return the yellow jersey (all of them? just one?), officially, he’s still listed as the winner of the 1996 edition even though he confessed later on he doped during that Tour. His teammates at the time, Erik Zabel, Rolf Aldag, Udo Bölts and Brian Holm have also admitted to being charged with slightly more potent than vitamin C substances. Team Telecom’s masseur, Jef d’Hont, has shared with the world his inside knowledge of organized EPO doping program on that team.

Jan Ullrich won the Tour in 1997 with Team Telecom. I wonder what he tells his kids about that win. Marco Pantani, the winner of the 1998 Tour, won’t have a chance to tell anything to anybody, not in this life, he’s dead but his doping affairs are well documented.

1999 gave us Lance Armstrong and his 7 Tour wins in a row. We all know now how this feat was achieved.

Floyd Landis won in a spectacular fashion in 2006. He didn’t get to enjoy his win for very long; a positive dope test came right after the end of the Tour de France and someone else was declared a winner.

2007 Tour was practically won by Michael Rasmussen but he was kicked out from the race by his own team in anticipation of a possible suspension for the missed out of competition doping controls. The win literally landed on Alberto Contador. He still had to chug along to Paris to collect the last yellow jersey but he didn’t win that Tour on the road just like Andy Schleck didn’t win it in 2010. Ironic, isn’t it?

One other exciting thing happened in that Tour; we saw a new breed of a rider emerge – the mountain sprinter. There were only two of them that year, Rasmussen and Contador. Two more appeared on the stage the following year, Riccardo Riccò and Leonardo Piepoli. Andy Schleck is the only mountain sprinter still standing today and not being suspended. A band of brothers.

I heard modern methods of training with a power meter is the main reason for this new breed of road racers. Compression garments too should not be ignored; who needs testosterone if you can recover with a pair of tight panty hose. And of course beetroot juice is as good as EPO, only legal.

At last, Carlos Sastre, who never been accused of doping, won Tour de France in 2008. Cycling forums around the world are infested with experts who claim it’s impossible to win Tour de France without doping. I wish I could gather all these experts on a stadium and ask them one simple question – How do you know it’s impossible to win Tour de France without doping? Have you tried it?

2009 gave us the most boring Tour in history although watching Klöden and Armstrong chasing their own teammate (Contador) up Verbier climb was very entertaining. This Tour, just like the one in 2008, has a legit winner which takes the count to 2 since Indurain’s win in 1995.

8 February 2012 gave us a winner of 2010 Tour de France but even Schleck himself gets no satisfaction from Alberto’s gift. “There is no reason to be happy now” he said. Indeed. ‘Cause I try and I try and I try and I try.

Some relief finally came in 2011 when we were treated to a doping untainted winner, Cadel Evans and a very exciting Tour bringing the count to 3 legit winners since 1995. Just 3. How this sport is still taken seriously is a bit of a mystery.

I don’t have a proof but I strongly suspect these and other like them cycling nicknames are fake, they are not real. I can’t imagine anyone, except cycling journalists of course, calling Thor Hushovd a God of Thunder. “OK, you and you will look after the God of Thunder, and you’ll cover The Killer while you stay with Spartacus. Don’t worry about Cobra, he won’t go anywhere today.” Can you imagine a team meeting going like this before a race? Me neither.

And this is why I think these nicknames are fake; they’ve been artificially devised to spice up race reports and cycling commentaries by journalists with poor imagination and little taste which is what makes them cheesy as well. Cobra? What is this? A 2nd Grade Cowboys and Indians game? C’mon, you can’t be serious.

There are real nicknames though in cycling, nicknames not forged by typewriter monkeys romanticising about the sport on a quiet Saturday night. I have no problem believing, for example, that Andreas Klöden goes by the nickname of Klodi in the peloton just like Jan Ullrich’s real nickname was Ulle rather than Der Kaiser. Not very romantic, I know, but unless you’re writing for a cycling magazine, you probably know that professional cycling isn’t a very romantic sport.

It’s not all dull and boring though in the world of real nicknames in cycling. Some nicknames come with a bit of a story behind them. Luis Herrera, a famous climber from the 80s and a winner of the King of the Mountains title in all 3 Grand Tours, came from a farming family in Columbia and loved gardening, hence the El Jardinerito (The Little Gardener) nickname.

Other nicknames in cycling, even though real, are not very well known to the public. Ever heard of Juan Pelota? If you didn’t, you’ll never guess whose nickname it is. Lance Armstrong. That’s right, read the story.

Meet Djamolidin Abdoujaparov

Abdullah in action

Not surprisingly, real nicknames of some Soviet era cycling stars are not as illustrious as some cycling journalists made them to be. Djamolidine Abdoujaparov, for example, was never called Tashkent Terror by anybody in real life. In Soviet peloton he was known as Абдула (Abdullah).

The nickname has its roots in one very popular, Soviet made Western style movie of the 70s, Белое Солнце Пустыни (The White Sun of the Desert). It’s one of those all time classics, still being watched today everywhere in Russia. Abdullah is the movie’s bad guy and he comes from Uzbekistan or maybe Turkmenistan, doesn’t really matter. What matters though is that over the years, the name Abdullah became somewhat of a mocking name for anybody who came from the region known in Russia as Middle Asia which is where Abdoujaparov comes from; he is from Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan.

The story of Abdoujaparov’s nickname doesn’t stop there. You’ll be surprised to learn that he was never, ever called Abdullah in his face. Ever. Except in some circumstances. Because of the mocking nature of this name among mostly Russian speaking peloton in the USSR, no one would ever dare to call Abdoujaparov “Abdullah” in his face. Suicidal. Behind his back, yes that’s what pretty much everyone called him.

Slippages befell upon some of us, less careful, from time to time. My own came one day in a team bus (which had a nickname of its own, Fanta, because of its colour scheme). We were getting ready for a race. It was wet and very cold outside and everybody was putting hot cream on their legs. I couldn’t be bothered looking for mine in the bag so I grabbed someone else’s tub. When I was done, Abdoujaparov grabbed the tub off me and started putting the cream on his legs. At this point the guy whose cream it was walked in from outside and said, looking at me, “Where’s my cream?” I nodded in Abdoujaparov’s direction, who was sitting just a metre away across the isle, and said, “Abdullah’s got it.” Oops. This wasn’t as bad as, for example, calling a dark skinned person a nigger but you just don’t call a Tatar from Tashkent “Abdullah” and hope to walk away from it.

He looked at me with a grin on his face and said, “Djaphir, not Abdullah.”

Djaphir, according to Abdoujaparov himself, was a diminutive of his first name and even though Djamolidin isn’t that difficult to pronounce for a Russian speaking person, it’s still too long for normal use. If you couldn’t be bothered with his full first name, your options were either not to talk to him or call him Djaphir. Unless you were looking for trouble.

The exceptions I mentioned above were reserved for some tight racing situations where in the heat of a moment you spit out whatever comes to your mind first and nobody cares about anything except the race. Since we all called Abdoujaparov “Abdullah” behind his back all the time, “Abdullah” is what would sometimes come from your lips if you needed to get his attention in the race. He didn’t mind.

Paradoxically, the normally scornful meaning of a nickname such as Abdullah was used with great respect with Abdoujaparov in the Soviet peloton.

And a bit of a trivia – Abdoujaparov is probably the only professional cyclist in the history of the sport whose name was used to name a rock band.

I’ll talk about few other famous Soviet era cycling nicknames in the next post.

If you know an interesting nickname story, by all means use the comments box below to share it with the world.

The Eagle of Madrid

I like cycling. All forms of it. I like road cycling and I like track cycling. I like mountain biking and I like cyclocross. I respect people who ride bicycles instead of cars when they can (and it has nothing to do with global warming hysteria; in fact, one day I’ll write about a theory I developed while drinking beer one afternoon which proposes that “The more hysteric you are about global warming, the more petrol you burn as fuel” or the TMHYAAGWTMPYBAF theory) and I like people who build bicycle frames from metal tubes.

Liking bicycles so much, you would expect I appreciate bike races on all terrains and in all forms. And I do. Except, being a road cyclist myself, I find professional road racing less and less attractive, both to watch and to recognise as a sport worthy to be called a sport in the commonly accepted sense of the word.

That ain’t workin’ that’s the way you do it

Watching modern Tour de France isn’t much more exciting than watching long distance running. If it’s a flat stage, the breakaway will go from the gun and no one will care about it for 3-4 hours. The cameras will then switch between showing a few guys riding tempo and the rolling peloton 10-15 minutes behind where absolutely nothing happens. You will see a lot of footage from a helicopter of the beautiful French countryside and hear Paul Sherwin tell you stories about every church and castle he spots on the ground (does he really know all this stuff or prints it off the Internet before each stage?). With 20km to go, the domestiques will be told to start the chase and guided by their managers from the team car via radio pieces, will catch the breakaway 1km away from the line which is where the real race starts and will be finished one minute later. Exciting? I don’t think so. And if you live in Australia, you’ll have to wait until 2am to watch 30 seconds of racing. At least in long distance running, you can watch people fight each other from start to finish and no one will let you go because your sponsors want to see their logo on TV.

Mountain stages used to be a battle field of professional road racing. Not anymore. The same script is played out in the mountains as is played on flat stages. Once the customary early breakaway goes, the mountain passes that used be to feared by every professional rider in the peloton are ridden at a steady pace that doesn’t bother too many riders and even some sprinters are comfortable with. You patiently wait until the last climb hoping to see the slaughter to begin as soon as the climb starts only to be fooled once again. No one’s going to do anything. Yes, they will ride hard and everyone except a few will be dropped but you’re not going to see a fight road racing used to be so famous for. Occasionally, one or two of them will accelerate as if shot from a catapult only a few seconds later to turn their heads back as if asking, “Pardon me but did I hurt anyone?”

Why would anybody want to watch this sort of stuff is a mystery unless you’re like me and are hoping against all odds to witness something like a stage to Morzine-Avoriaz in 2006 when Floyd Landis pulled the greatest escape in the history of cycling and won the Tour. Of course he failed a dope test later and was stripped of his win but we didn’t know that when we were watching The Escape, did we? And I’m sure I wasn’t the only one whose jaw remained dropped the entire time Landis was on the run that day with Oscar Pereiro equally shocked seeing the yellow jersey flying away from him.

And this brings me to another Tour de France winner who might turn out not to be a winner at all, or at least not a winner of the Tour’s 2010 edition, Alberto Contador.

Doping Games

At this point you may be thinking I’m about to start a long lecture about how clenbuterol, a banned substance Contador was busted with, might have ended up in his body. I won’t and I hope you’ll understand why very soon even though I still have a few words to say about this so called “case”. As I said above, professional cycling can’t be taken seriously anymore as a sport when a circus like this one we’re all witnessing now is going on.

Let me briefly recall the situation here for clarity’s sake.

Alberto Contador, during 2010 Tour de France, turns up a positive test for a banned substance, clenbuterol. UCI keeps this under the carpet (perhaps even literally) for more than a month and only makes an announcement when a German journalist learns independently about it and contacts the UCI before going public with this information. Contador then gets temporarily suspended until his national federation decides what to do with him.

Four months later, the Spanish federation clears Contador of the doping charges. UCI and WADA appeal to CAS. This is where we’re at, waiting for CAS to announce their decision.

Now, under the current anti-doping code, once the A sample is found to be positive for a banned substance and then confirmed by the B sample, the athlete is pronounced guilty of a doping violation.

Unlike the court of law, the anti-doping code does not seek to prove beyond reasonable doubt the guilt of the accused. A single positive sample, confirmed by another, is the de facto verdict of guilt. Nothing else is required.

This is a very important, key concept missed by so many today who discuss this case on cycling forums, blogs and in news articles. Once the positive result of a doping test is established, the burden of proof shifts to the athlete to prove, under the anti-doping code provisions, his innocence from this point on. WADA doesn’t have to do anything else, in this particular case and under its own code, they’ve already done their job, there’s nothing else to prove.

Contador, on the other hand, who claims traces of clenbuterol found in his sample came from a steak he ate the night before the test, has to provide the evidence of this claim. This, in my opinion, is an impossible task.

If I were on the CAS panel, there would only be one question I would have liked to asked Contador:

- How do you know clenbuterol came from the steak?

Because, you see, there’s no steak to examine. He ate it. He needs the steak if he wants to avoid anti-doping sanctions because, under section 10.5.1 we find, quote:

If an Athlete establishes in an individual case that he or she bears No Fault or Negligence, the otherwise applicable period of Ineligibility shall be eliminated … the Athlete must also establish how the Prohibited Substance entered his or her system in order to have the period of Ineligibility eliminated…

Please note two very important points here:

1. an athlete must establish “No Fault or Negligence”, and, once this is established,
2. an athlete must also establish “how the Prohibited Substance entered his or her system.”

How can Contador satisfy these 2 requirements without the steak he ate, or at least the source of the steak (e.g. a farmer who uses clenbuterol with his cattle) I don’t know. Without this, he simply can’t know where the substance came from.

Note also the code, if you want to read it, nowhere states WADA has to prove anything at all except conduct the testing under the established guidelines. It’s not their job to provide evidence in order to contradict or undermine Contador’s claims about how clenbuterol entered his system. They’ve already established his guilt. It is Contador now who has to prove he is not guilty. The CAS’s job then is to examine the evidence Contador presents and decide if it proves clenbuterol came from where he says it did.

This is why I find this so called “case” a circus with WADA and UCI attempting to establish clenbuterol presence in Contador’s sample was due to an earlier blood transfusion or some other “maybe”, “if” or “probably”. Why are they doing this? They don’t understand their own anti-doping code? Of course they do. Maybe there’s no trust in the anti-doping system? Maybe they feel a positive doping test is not enough to sanction as big a star as Contador?

Whatever it is, the show goes on and it’s becoming more grotesque every year.

What do you think?

The big news the last few days (and we all thought it was an off season) are the allegations made against Alexander Vinokourov about his 2010 win in Liege – Bastogne – Liege. The Swiss magazine L’Illustre claims Vinokourov (Team Astana) paid €100,000 to Kolobnev (Katusha) to not contest the Belgian classic. They know this because Vinokourov’s email account was hacked and they got hold of email exchange between the two that took place the day after the LBL race.

I was prompted to write this post after reading another post on Cycling Tips blog, “A dark side of cycling”. I also read some other blogs and plenty of comments on those blogs. I even left a couple of comments myself on Cycling Tips. You may say this topic really got my attention. Not the allegations, but the reaction to the allegations in the general cycling populace.

The reaction this story generated among cycling fans can roughly be grouped in 2 lots:

Lot 1 – We thought doping scandals were bad enough, now this. They not only dope, they also sell races to each other. What a circus.

Lot 2 – Selling races is an old practice in cycling, nothing’s new here. It also makes sense now how Vino won all these years, either through dope or by buying races.

But does it? Does it make sense to you because it doesn’t make much sense to me.

To start with, assuming the emails are real in the first place, what exactly is there in those email quotes? One guy gives another guy his bank account details and says, “Here, wire the hundred grand into this account.” Suspicious? I don’t know but it becomes so because the email was sent a day after the race. Huh? Maybe a benefit of a doubt could be afforded to these guys? Why, just because the bank details were given after the race, immediately assume it’s a payout for a yesterday’s race? I know it’s tempting to think that way but is it logical to think that way?

Fine, let’s assume a deal between Vino and Kolobnev took place. What kind of a deal though? What do those email quotes say? Nothing. Could it be, for example, as the leading group formed not far from the finish, full of the biggest stars in the peloton, Vinokourov approached Kolobnev and said, “We’re having a situation here, if you help me to win this race, I’ll pay you €100,000.” Good story? Is it as good as the L’Illustre’s one? Better? Worse?

Consider this. Even though everyone knows collusion is forbidden by the UCI rules, the rule is routinely broken. In fact, it’s completely ignored and, you may be surprised, not many riders even heard of it. Quite often riders from different teams help each other. Openly. Everyone knows Contador helped Valverde to win the Dauphiné in 2009. The Cyclingnews article at the time stated:

“…Alberto Contador clearly assisted Valverde at the Dauphiné every time Cadel Evans attacked. Valverde denied there was an agreement between them but their cooperation was obvious. “If I can help him at the Tour de France, I’ll do it,” Valverde said to a question about the possible help that Contador could look for in case of an offensive by Lance Armstrong.”

And this is a big race with a lot of media coverage and public exposure. One reason no one cares is because the rule is impossible to enforce. Oh and by the way, when Valverde said he will help Contador in the Tour de France to fend off Armstrong’s offensive, it’s helpful to keep in mind that Armstrong and Contador were teammates at the time while Valverde was employed by a rival team. This is cycling for you. Make of it what you want – rules are ignored and help is sought from your rivals to go against your own teammate. Collusion? What collusion?

Races are also given away, especially the big ones. Different reasons. Sometimes it’s a friendship thing, other times out of respect or out of pity. Whatever. If you’re a champion, one win more, one win less, doesn’t matter.

We all remember Armstrong giving away a Mont Ventoux stage of the Tour de France to Pantani. Apparently, he regrets that now. More recently, Contador, racing for the Saxo Bank team, gave away a stage of the Giro to Tiralongo, an Astana rider. Cyclingnews reported at the time:

“Alberto Contador said that he let Paolo Tiralongo win stage 19 of the Giro d’Italia to repay the Italian domestique for all the work he did for him during the 2010 Tour de France, when they both rode for the Astana team.”

These things are not done in secret, they are there in the open. This is why it’s not hard to imagine for a deal to be made between Vino and Kolobnev. Both Russian, perhaps even friends. Who else are you going to seek help from in a breakaway like this? In a select group full of very accomplished riders, even just one strong ally can make a difference between winning and losing.

As the race went on, it just so happened that the two Russians outperformed everybody and broke away from the rest of the elite group. Now, in my story (and please note, I’m imagining things here), the deal could have taken place with 30 or whatever kilometres to go when it wasn’t clear just yet how the race will unfold. No one knows at this stage who is going to win. One guy agrees to help another, for a fee. A simple “Watch my back” is good enough help. At least one possible winner won’t chase you when you attack. For Vinokourov, this was worth €100,000. They could also find the time to talk this over (why this is important, you’ll see later) and there are different ways Kolobnev could help Vino, the pressure wasn’t on yet.

L’Illustre’s story, however, requires for the deal to take place somewhere near the finish when it was clear that either Vino or Kolobnev will win. But wait. Was there such a moment at the end of the race? I don’t think so. The chasers, Valverde, Gilbert and Evans were only 40 seconds behind. When Gilbert attacked with about 3km to go, he came within 20 seconds of the Russians. Very close. There’s no doubt both Vino and Kolobnev were constantly updated on the chase situation via the radio. It’s just hard to imagine either one of them thought this race was a done deal. To keep the gap, they had to go full gas, at all times, not negotiate a deal about who is going to win the race.

If you watch the footage, you’ll notice the camera constantly switches between the Russians and the chase in the last 2km so it’s impossible to insist the conversation between the two didn’t even take place because we don’t see it. They could have talked while we were watching Gilbert blowing himself up in his desperate attempt to bridge to Vino and Kolobnev, we just don’t know.

What we do know though is that after 6.5 hours of hard racing and sitting at near maximum heart rate because you’re giving it absolutely everything at this moment, you’re not exactly in a position to negotiate a financial deal. I would even suggest, based on my own experience, your intellectual capacity at a time like this is that of a cow. And you’re definitely incapable of putting together a sentence, never mind an intelligent one.

This is what must have taken place with 1-2km to go if L’Illustre’s story is true:

- Hundred grand Euro!
- What?!
- Hundred grand!
- What?!
- I’ll pay you!
- What?!
- I’ll pay you!

Pause… Kolobnev thinking…

- Don’t sprint!
- OK!

Did you see anything like this took place? I didn’t.

Something else – why would Kolobnev accept €100,000? Kolobnev isn’t a Grand Tour rider, he’s a Classics specialist, a one day show. It doesn’t get bigger than the La Doyenne for someone like Kolobnev, this is it, this is the race. You win this, and you’re forever in the history books, you’re one of them, the big guys. Why sell it? And especially for not that much an amount of money? His bonus for winning Liege – Bastogne – Liege would have probably exceeded €100,000 anyway and with a win like this it’s not unreasonable to ask for 25% or more increase of your contract (€700,000 in 2010) when it’s time to negotiate a new one. In other words, he’s worse off by selling the race. It doesn’t make sense.

Finally, the email quotes published in Russian media don’t sound like they were written by one rider to another. The language is artificial, a make-believe kind of language. It’s possible the quotes were translated back into Russian from French but it’s hard to imagine one cyclist telling another cyclist “Вот мои банковские реквизиты”. What is this, a board meeting at Itera?

Make of this story what you want it to be but until emails are published in full or confessions are made, the dark side of cycling didn’t get darker this week.

Richard played AFL for a while in Melbourne, raced motorbikes and now’s doing this.

What was so attractive in going West for a Soviet professional amateur? Money of course and very good money at that. How it was made? Read on…

I’ll have to throw some numbers here because without them, you won’t be able to appreciate what kind of money I’m talking about.

For example, it wouldn’t make much sense for me to make reference to Soviet roubles, you wouldn’t know what they were worth 25-30 years ago. Converting them to American dollars, a currency everyone seems to understand and is comfortable with, won’t help either. The official rate in the 70s and 80s was 100 USD = 63 RUB. It was fixed. It fluctuated by a point or two just to make it look like a true conversion rate but it was fixed nevertheless and had no relevance to how much a Soviet rouble was really worth – the rouble wasn’t traded on the currency market. Important to note here is you couldn’t legally buy or sell American dollars, or any other “hard” currency for that matter, it was a criminal offence to do so. It was also a crime to be found in a possession of any “hard” currency. Depending on the circumstances and the amount, you could be locked up for a long time for having some US dollars on you, especially if you’re caught at the Customs when entering or leaving the USSR.

But you can’t lock up the market though. This is what the fathers of socialism have never managed to grasp when they were devising their evil plans to build a better society (and those who follow in their foot steps today, still don’t seem to get it either) – you can’t regulate, tame or otherwise be in control of the market, you fail every time. And so it was, even though it was illegal to buy, sell or be in the possession of any “hard” currency, it was still available on the “black” market (or simply a free market in disguise). Of course here, the conversion rate was truly reflective of the supply and demand law. In 1984, when I bought my first US dollars, the rate was 100 USD = 400 RUB. By 1986, it shot to 500 RUB. By 1987 to 1000 RUB. In 1989 it was 5000 RUB and by 1990-91 nobody wanted roubles anymore, but I won’t go into that period. The country has completely disintegrated by then and I left it in 1991 and never went back.

At any rate, if I told you I spent 200 roubles on a pair of jeans in 1984, a simple conversion via official rate at the time would give us roughly 300 USD. Somewhat an expensive pair but nothing outrageous. If, on the other hand, I used a “black” market rate of 1984, this would be a US$50 pair. So which price would give you an idea of how much that pair cost me back in 1984? Neither. Both of them are misleading.

If, however, I told you that 200 roubles was a pretty good monthly salary back then, a sum of money you could live on comfortably well for a month, I’m sure you could easily relate to that. For example, I would say that here in Australia, a $4,000 a month after tax could easily be compared, in buying power, to the 200 roubles I just mentioned. That is, you can meet your day to day needs with this money and even save some but you wouldn’t call yourself wealthy. Therefore, it’s best to relate to what I’m going to talk about by means of these monthly incomes, say 200 roubles is an equivalent to an income of about $4,000 after tax in Australia. It will be different in the US or Europe but I’m sure you know what a decent salary is in your country. Point is, whatever it might be today, it’s roughly equal to about 200 roubles in this discussion.

Hence, that pair of jeans I mentioned above cost me about A$4,000 if I bought them here at the Levi’s store. I’m not kidding. This is why you could easily sell those jeans for half the price you paid for them after wearing them for a year if you looked after them. And wouldn’t you look after them if you paid $4,000 for them? I’m sure you would.

Let’s get back to cycling though. Why were we training 3 times a day, clocking 40,000km a year, not seeing our families literally for months? To be the best in the world? Yes, that too but mostly to be good enough to be sent to race abroad. Going West would skyrocket your income.

Let me give you some examples of how the money was made. If you’re a cyclist, you know what a tubular is. If you’re not, don’t worry, a tubular is a type of tire you put on your wheels. Back in the 80s, and before, these things were made in Europe, not China as it is today and they were expensive. How expensive? A good tubular would cost anything between US$50 and US$100 retail, some were cheaper of course but a racing tubular would cost you. USSR was making tubulars too, they were not very good, but they were acceptable. You couldn’t buy them in a shop though, not available. “Black” market? Not a problem. 400 roubles for 100 tubulars.

Now here’s your business transaction when you went West:

• You buy 100 tubulars at the cost of 400 roubles and take them with you to Western Europe.
• When you’re there, you sell them to riders from the Western teams, US$15 a pop or US$1,000 for the lot. With the cheapest tubular anywhere in Europe at around US$30 and up, do you think it was difficult to sell these at half price of the market’s bottom? They were selling like hot cakes.
• Suppose you sold the lot in one shot and now have US$1,000 in your pocket.
• You smuggle this money back to the USSR. A common place where you would hide this cash was in the seat tube or inside the seatpost. Nobody would ever bother to check your bike at the Customs, don’t know why, they just never did. The common perception was, ordinarily they didn’t touch athletes because they just never knew who they were dealing with. For all you know, as a Customs officer, you might be dealing with some multiple Olympic champion who has admirers in high places. Best approach was to leave athletes alone if you wanted to keep your job, a very valuable job as a matter of fact (a source of constant bribes of all kinds). Eventually, I stopped hiding this money in the bike and just kept it in my pocket thinking that if someone ratted me in and they know I’ve got dollars on me, they will find it regardless of where I hid them, if nobody ratted me in and I behave myself when entering the country, they won’t touch me.
• Finally, you sell your US$1,000 on the “black” market for 4,000 roubles (I don’t want to go into details about why it was possible to buy and sell dollars at 4 RUB per 1 USD, but it was).

If you’re getting lost with the numbers, here’s the summary: you invested 400 roubles into buying tubulars and a week or so later you’ve got 4,000 roubles. If you forgot how much 4,000 roubles was, I’ll remind you – it’s 20 very good monthly salaries. In Australia, 20 good monthly salaries, after taxes, would be 20 x $4,000 or $80,000. You do 5-8 trips like this a year and you’re looking at some nice income. This is why I said previously your regular salary you’re paid for racing a bike becomes trivial and unimportant as soon as you start going West. Going West is how you make money, who cares what your salary is.

Now, imagine you’re 15 years old and someone who has done this business very successfully for several years in the past tells you what this game, road cycling, is all about. And this is exactly what my first coach has done and explained to me why I should devote everything I could to this sport:

“Olympic Games, World Championships and the Peace Race, yes it’s all good and very romantic, but before you get there, if at all, make sure you’re good enough to go West and then play the game right, don’t be a fool.”

The tubulars transaction I described above is simple and straightforward but wasn’t the only one you could make money on. For example, instead of bringing the cash back to the USSR, you could buy a couple of stereos, say $US100 each and sell them for 1,500-2,000 roubles at home (7-10 monthly salaries or A$28,000 – A$40,000 in today’s buying power). You couldn’t bring more than 2 though, they would ask you at the Customs why you’re bringing 10 stereos into the country, and more importantly, where did you get the money from to buy 10 stereos in the first place? Two stereos was easy to explain – one for me, one for my mother in law. Where I got them from? Oh, these are race prizes I won.

Since you still had some cash left after buying stereos, you could also buy 5 pair of jeans for example. With jeans, the most important thing was that they should be of a recognizable brand in the USSR. Levi’s, Montana, Lee, Jordan or something like that. Who cares if you bought them at some Polish shop for US$10 a piece and they were fake, you don’t need to tell this to your buyer and you sell them for 200 roubles very quick (A$4,000). You could easily bring 5 pairs into the country without any trouble and you’re looking at A$20,000 in today’s buying power.

And on it went. Pure entrepreneurship, whatever you fancy. Walkman? Sure why not, these cost a fortune back home. Adidas or Nike shoes? Same thing, you pay US$40 for them in France and you sell them big time back home. Important thing was to spread your $1,000 worth of merchandise across many different items so that you will have a smooth sailing through the Customs and if you’re not an idiot, you can easily do that.

Funnily enough, you were actually allowed to bring your prize money back if you won any but you had to declare it at the border and then surrender it to the government at the official rate of 100 USD = 63 RUB. Obviously, no one was stupid enough to do that. However, if you had somewhat too much merchandise with you, the official letter from race organizers about how much money your team was paid was a legitimate cover to explain the excess of goods you’re bringing in – you won some money, a few stereos and some shoes and you bought the rest of the stuff really cheap on sale. Most of the time though, they wouldn’t even bother asking. “Sportsmen? Come right through…”

Making this kind of money, and the way it was made, do you really think anybody cared about “admiration and respect of our nation”?

Multiple Tour de France stage winner, Abdoujaparov was pretty good at time trials when he wanted to

In the last part of the series, I’ll talk about why winning Olympic Games, World Championships or a Peace Race was the ultimate monetary prize a Soviet racer was rewarded with.