EVERY July, Christophe Bassons would line up for Stage One of the Tour de France knowing he had no chance of ever wearing the yellow jersey. Not because he was a domestique, the unheralded grinders who sacrifice themselves to help the star of the show. But because he played fair. In a sport more drug-addled than Ozzy Osbourne’s tour bus, the French rider steadfastly refused to ‘load the cannon’ – a slang term for the use of banned stimulant EPO.
By 1998, he was the only member of his team, Festina, who wasn’t injecting. When frustration boiled...