A book written by journalist and amateur rider Andrew Tilin on doping in cycling races appears to have secured him a two year ban from the US Anti-Doping Agency. USADA announced Friday that the 46 year old has accepted a two year ban based on what it said was his admitted use of the prohibited Anabolic Agents, synthetic testosterone and dehydroepiandrosterone (“DHEA”).
USADA doesn’t state when exactly Tilin admitted that he had broken sporting rules, but he has written a book entitled ‘The Doper Next Door: My Strange and Scandalous Year on Performance-Enhancing Drugs,’ in which he explains his use of various banned substances.
The book is due to be released this June. The pre-release publicity lays out some details, saying that Tilin first set out to try to talk to regular amateurs who take banned substances, finding out why they take them, where they get them and what the effects are. It said that he ended up making a choice to join that lesser-known group of riders.
“These controversial drugs often silence their users, and so his queries might have gone unanswered had Tilin not looked in the mirror and succumbed to curiosity. Soon wielding syringes, this forty-something husband and father of two children becomes the doper next door,” the blurb states.
“During his yearlong odyssey, Tilin is transformed. He becomes stronger, hornier, and aggressive. He wades into a subculture of doping physicians, real estate agents, and aging women who believe that Tilin’s type of legal “hormone replacement therapy” is the key to staying young—and he often agrees. He also lives with the price paid for renewed vitality, worrying about his health, marriage, and cheating ways as an amateur bike racer. And all along the way, he tells us what doping is really like—empowering and scary.”
Tilin’s two-year ban began on March 30th, the day USADA said that he accepted the sanction. It has stripped him from all results achieved on and after January 1, 2008, including medals, points and prizes. The agency states that he admitted first taking these substances on that date.
According to USA Cycling’s stats, his results during that period include seventh in his category at the 2008 Mt Tamalpais Hill Climb and sixteenth in the Ronde Van Brisbeen criterium.
One of the most unusual aspects of Tilin’s case is that he interviewed former doping rider Joe Papp for Outside Online’s June 2008 issue, documenting some of the negative outcomes the rider had experienced. At the same time, it appears that he was taking some of the same substances that Papp had been using.
“But regardless of his reasons for fessing up, the evidence that his statements have ruined his life, both personally and professionally, is overwhelming. His fellow pros don't talk to him, and the chances that he'll ever race professionally again are negligible,” he wrote then about Papp. “As for the little guys, the recreational racers and fans, they may be his most outspoken critics. Months after confessing, Papp still gets e-mails telling him he's despised—either for betraying a rider like Landis or, more often, for simply admitting that he juiced up.”
Papp has not yet responded to requests for a comment. However on his Twitter feed he made his thoughts clear today. “How does the media contribute to the perpetuation of doping? Just ask Andrew Tilin,” he said. “This is a guy who intentionally doped for a year, knowing it was banned, AFTER he wrote extensively about the negative consequences of doping...”
He suggested that Tilin should have been handed a four year ban, ‘for the egregious nature of his offence, given his longstanding awareness of the negative consequences of doping.’