How to get hooked on drugs

It's easy. Struggle a bit in your races, maybe no more than any other neo-pro, but have a kindly dealer handy to tempt you to 'try this'. When you take the pills and they seem to work, well, it's a done deal. I mean if they didn't work you'd stay clean, yes? But they do work and you go faster. Jorg confirms this theory: Jörg Jaksche was 19 years old and not performing at all well in his first pro year, when he got a suggestion as to how to save his career. "The team manager came into my room and said: Listen; in cycling you take drugs like this, and either you accept or you leave the sport," Jaksche told the anti-doping conference "Play the Game" in Iceland.

Of course you could say it was weakness that sucked him in. There are times when you have to choose between good and bad, and it's your decision and your personal responsibility. Bjarne Riis appears to believe in that: "Furthermore, that this is supposed to have been a threat is definitely insulting and tells me that Jaksche either has a very bad sense of memory or deliberately chooses to twist the truth. It is correct that I told him about how difficult it would be to come back, and I was speaking from experience here, since I had been through the same only a short time before. That Jaksche still blames all sorts of other people for the mistakes he made himself is just so trivial. It is necessary that the problems in cycling are taken care of, and that's what I stand for."