Cyc: You rode through doping’s peak era and now manage a team. How can you be sure that cycling is cleaner now?
JV: There’s a lot of evidence, but it’s all evidence that can also be shot down. Over the past decade, from a behind-closed-doors perspective, I’ve witnessed riders that were absolutely clean win some of the biggest races. These are riders where I’ve had complete transparency regarding their medical records, and I’ve known about their personal lives. In 1996 I was behind the scenes, and I saw that to win clean was totally impossible.
That’s not to say it’s perfect now, but it is possible to win the biggest races clean. With regards to anti-doping, out in the social media sphere, people want blood, they want names, they want people taken down. It’s understandable, but that’s not the fundamental purpose of anti-doping. Its purpose is to protect the rights of clean athletes and protect the health of all athletes.
From that perspective, I think anti-doping is working. Can you still dope and not get caught by the biological passport? Yes. Can you still dope enough that it makes a large enough biological difference to impact the race profoundly and not get caught? I think the answer to that is no. It’s pulling in the net tighter.
Also, I’ve seen riders who are now 10 years into their careers and have never encountered doping. It’s not that they’ve chosen not to dope, it’s that it’s never been presented to them.