page_title: Doping at the Tour de France
section_title: The Convicts of the Road
hierarchical_section_title: Doping at the Tour de France / 1903-1940s: Doping as acceptable means / The Convicts of the Road
caption_attribution_description: Henri Pélissier
context_page_description: 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. 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, 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". Journalist Hans Halter wrote in 1998 that "For as long as the Tour has existed, since 1903, its participants have been doping themselves.
context_section_description: 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.
  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."
caption: Henri Pelissier, 1919
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