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Ryder Hesjedal accused of EPO use by suspended Danish cyclist Michael Rasmussen

andrew bucholtz

Canadian cycling's most famous name is under fire. Ryder Hesjedal, the only Canadian to ever win a Grand Tour (the 2012 Giro d'Italia), is reportedly named as a performance-enhancing drug user in an upcoming autobiography by Michael Rasmussen, a Danish cyclist who confessed to doping from 1998 to 2010 earlier this year and is currently serving a two-year ban. (Update: Hesjedal has since admitted to doping during the timeframe Rasmussen mentions.) The book itself, called Yellow Fever, is set for publication Monday, but explosive excerpts from it have already appeared in Danish media outlets. Via VeloNation, here's the key part accusing Hesjedal and other Canadians of PED use:

One of the biggest names implicated by Rasmussen is the 2012 Giro d’Italia winner Hesjedal, with the claims relating back to the 2003 season. According to the Dane, the then-mountainbike rider Hesjedal plus fellow Canadians Seamus McGrath and Chris Sheppard took advice from him as regards the taking of banned substances.

He said the decision was prompted by their desire to ride the 2004 Olympic Games. “A good result in the world championships [2003] could send them to the Olympics in Athens in 2004. They moved into my basement in August, before I went to the Vuelta a Espana, and right after I had ridden the Meisterschaft von Zürich,” Rasmussen wrote in his upcoming book Yellow Fever, according to Politiken.

“There, they stayed around fourteen days time. I trained with them in the Dolomites and taught them how to made vitamin injections and how you took EPO and Synacthen [cortisone].”

He stated that the trio ended up with hemotocrit levels over 48, close to the limit of 50. After that, he said that Hesjedal finished second in the race, McGrath looked set to be between sixth or eighth but dropped out and Sheppard was sixteenth. He said the riders each received money from the Canadian government and that Hesjedal would have taken Olympic gold the following year had he not punctured.

It's important to note that this is only one side of the story. Rasmussen's Yellow Fever coauthor Klaus Wivel told Danish newspaper Politken he tried to contact the three Canadians mentioned, but while Sheppard and McGrath declined comment, Hesjedal didn't respond. Hesjedal also didn't respond when Cyclingnews tried to reach him. He deserves to have his side heard, and it's notable that Rasmussen doesn't claim to have seen Hesjedal use EPO (a hormone that can boost red blood cell production, aiding cyclists during climbs) or another banned substance. Still, these are troubling accusations, especially against a guy who's been such a bright spot for Canadian cycling.

Hesjedal has had a long and remarkable cycling career. He began in mountain biking, picking up world championships in the mountain bike relay in 2001 and 2002, earning a silver medal as an individual at the 2003 worlds and appearing on course for gold in the 2004 Olympics before a flat tire. Hesjedal then went to road racing and found some success with the Discovery Channel team before switching to Garmin-Slipstream in 2008. He really broke out in 2009, becoming the first Canadian to ever win a stage in the Vuelta a España and the first Canadian to win a Grand Tour stage since 1988, then went on to finish seventh overall in the 2010 Tour de France (later bumped up to 6th after winner Alberto Contador was disqualified for doping). 2012 was what really brought him to prominence, though, thanks to a dramatic last-day victory in the Giro d'Italia, making him the only Canadian to ever win one of the top three cycling races worldwide.

The rest of Hesjedal's 2012 season wasn't as impressive, as he crashed in the Tour de France and then underwhelmed at the Olympics (partly thanks to the challenges of being the only Canadian rider in the road race), but he still won the Lionel Conacher Award as The Canadian Press' top male Canadian athlete of the year. That says a lot about what he's accomplished and how many he's inspired. 2013's been rougher for him, though, with a withdrawal from the Giro and an early crash in the Tour de France, and these doping allegations might make his life tougher still. It will be interesting to see how Hesjedal responds.