Cape Town – David George put the phone down, went to his room, lay on his bed and sobbed. The bottom had just fallen out of his world. “Don’t feel sorry for me,” says the former professional cyclist, “I made my own choices. I must be accountable.”
The call, on November 5, was an anti-doping official telling George he had returned a positive result for EPO (erythropoietin) in an out-of-competition test by the SA Institute for Drug-Free Sport (Saids).
A day later there would be a “disgraced” tag attached to his name – a label South African sportsmen who have fallen from grace find almost impossible to shake.
When he was 17, George set his sights on racing in the Tour de France and becoming a cycling champion. Twenty years on, after racing for professional teams in Europe, representing South Africa at the Olympics, picking up medals at the Commonwealth Games and placing second at the Absa Cape Epic, he’ll be remembered as a “disgraced” cyclist.
“I had a singular purpose – to win. I did what I thought was necessary to be a professional bike rider,” he told the Cape Argus last week in his first interview since the news of his doping broke.
“My reason for life – to compete – has been pulled out from under me. I wanted to be a champion and, well, let’s just say… well, it got murky.”
George pleaded guilty and received a two-year ban.
“Imagine being told you can no longer do the thing you’ve been doing for 20 years? It’s been a big hole in my life not being able to race.”
George says he has done a lot of soul-searching in the last three months, during which time he also became a father: “It’s been an emotional journey. I’ve had to acknowledge my shortcomings.”
George has helped Saids improve its anti-doping strategy and Khalid Galant, the institute’s CEO, believes George realises he made a mistake and wants to do his time.
“We’ve never had an athlete admit guilt, waive his right to attend his hearing and then agree to with work with us,” said Galant.
“Make no mistake he’s not a hero, but I have to acknowledge that it’s a bold step.”
Galant says Saids may use George as a drug-free ambassador.
According to George, dopers who have been caught have three choices – to hide and wait for the storm to blow over, to lie, or to tell the truth.
“If it had been someone else who had tested positive I’m pretty sure they would have run away, but I wanted to be part of the solution. I realised the only way to atone is to do what I can to make it right.”
However, George isn’t prepared to reveal the dirty details of where, when and who. “What’s the point of naming names? I made my own choices. By taking people down to absolve myself isn’t an honourable solution – if there’s anything honourable in this mess. But I told Saids I could give them insight into their controls.”
When talking about the “why” of his journey into doping, George maintains that the system failed him: “You don’t need any more evidence to realise that doping has been endemic. Nice guys dope, arseholes dope, women dope, clever people dope, veterans dope. It’s everywhere.”
According to George, it wasn’t long before he realised he had two choices – to chase his dream and “compromise” himself or stop racing altogether. “I chose my dream,” he says. When his phone rang on November 5, his dream turned into a nightmare.
George will not reveal when he started to dope, but says it was in Europe as a 20-year-old cyclist that his “paradigm was set”.
“I saw things,” he says. “I’m a bright guy and it didn’t take me long to figure out what was going on. When you’re young and cynical, and you have no mentorship, and you’re seeing all of this, then what’s right and what’s wrong becomes murky.”
George insists he did not dope to cheat. “I did it for that illusive level playing field, which sounds stupid until you’re an athlete. I did it because I believed I had to. I rationalised it. If everyone is doing it – and you know they are – then you’re at a disadvantage if you don’t do it.”
According to George, “the hypocrisy” is one of the main drivers that led him to doping. “People are held to different standards. Lance (Armstrong) was on a pedestal. We knew he was doping, but there are levels of complicity in protecting ‘the heroes’. Without doping I would have been out. You roll with it and think you are invincible, but you’re not.”
George says people think doping is the easy way out. “There’s nothing easy about it. If you hide it from your family it’s stressful, if you tell them you compromise them. And then there are the consequences of a positive (test). Three of my teammates lost their jobs and a sponsor lost credibility.”
The sponsor, Nedbank, acted swiftly and withdrew from the team 360 Life. “After that, Nedbank donated a lot of money to drug-free sport… that was my salary,” George grins, “but it was the right thing to do.”
He says that, ironically, the time he had the least pressure and the least incentive to dope was with Nedbank.
“I f***ed it up.”
According to George, young cyclists need mentors to help them with the enormous pressures from managers, sponsors and other cyclists.
“I was a South African kid in Europe. I was in a team in Italy and couldn’t speak a word of Italian. I was lonely and had no one looking out for me.”
George says the media’s noise does not help: “The day my test results came out was the day Obama got elected for his second term, but I got the headline on the telephone poles. That’s sensationalism.”
The timing wasn’t great for George. Armstrong was about to blow up and there was a George-Armstrong connection because they were both on the US Postal Service team in 1999/2000.
George does not have much time for Armstrong.
“He is really not a nice person,” he says. “He was horrible to people, he humiliated them. Other cyclists who doped are leading peaceful lives, but Lance is being vilified – not because of the doping, but because he is a bully.”
George was vilified, too, when the news broke of his positive result.
Robbie Hunter, South Africa’s most successful road cyclist, tweeted: “15-year time bomb just went bang.”
Daryl Impey, another professional cyclist, wrote: “There are many of us paying the price for these clowns.”
Greg Minnaar, the downhill mountain bike world champion, joined the fray: “David George, you idiot. Who’s next??? I don’t even know why I’m disappointed in David George’s positive test, it was only a matter of time. You can only dodge so many bullets.”
“The negative stuff always hurts but you have to stay resilient,” says George. “However, most people have been incredibly forgiving– and that has been healing. I learnt that the people who matter stick by you and the ones who didn’t like you kick you when you’re down.”
Despite the support, George says he has had some “pretty dark days”.
“It’s difficult to get to see a point where I’m going to be able to shake off the stigma – and seeing ‘disgraced’ before my name really hurts. Yes, I doped. Yes, it was wrong and, yes, I’m going to try change it.” — Cape Argus