Lieuwe Westra abused cortisone by getting a doctor’s cert; repeatedly for years. And he believes Team Sky and lots of other pros were doing the same.
Former pro rider Lieuwe Westra has admitted abusing the therapeutic use exemption (TUE) exemption system to take drugs that enhance his performance.
The former Astana pro said he would feign injury, such as inflammation of the knees, to secure a prescriptions for cortisone.
His reason for seeking the substance when he really wasn’t injured was because he knew it would aid performance.
Westra said he took the substances under TUE during periods of his career he needed to hit peak form.
His admission is carried in a Dutch newspaper this weekend ahead of the publication of his new book - The Beast, the cycling life of Lieuwe Westra.
Advertisement
"I think I can tell the story about the cortisone injections openly, because I don’t feel I really did anything wrong," he said.
"Almost every rider of my generation worked on peak times in this way.
"How do you think the classics specialists and cyclists tried to distinguish themselves from each other?
“And the marginal gains of Team Sky? Same cloth a suit.
“If guilt should be appointed, it might be better to look at the doctors in cycling. They facilitate this behaviour by helping with certificates."
Westra, now aged 36 years, began with the Continental team Krolstone; from 2006 to 2007. After that he competed for five years with Vacansoleil; first a ProContinental team and then WorldTour.
Related News
And from 2014 to 2016 he rode for Astana.
He said he faked one knee injury for several years in order to get the medications under TUE to boost his form.
“I shot it in my own body to cycle faster, to grab prizes, to receive compliments,” he says.
“In my first year as a pro it became clear that with only hard training no victories were achieved.
"If you wanted to join the big boys, you had to look up the limits of the permissible.''
He retired in 2016 after a decade as a top flight pro. And he says if EPO was still a major problem when he started, he would have take it.
He believes the temptation of such a powerful performance enhancer would have been too much for him to resist.
"I noticed within months riders were guilty of cortisone. It was secretly talked about,” he said of the period he turned pro.
“You felt no pain after such an injection. You’d go deeper and the euphoria became the master of your body.”
He said lots of well know riders “provided a medical certificate” for classics and other major races.
And he claims the teams did not want to know what riders were taking. If they did not know, they could not be blamed, he says.
"Although they often knew it, of course, but we did not talk about it openly. We had to perform and it did not matter to them, as long as we were not caught. Ignorance is bliss.''
Topics
