Cycling: Simpson still the sting in the morality tale

Thirty-five years ago last week, the autopsy on the cyclist Tom Simpson was released. It read simply: "Death was due to a cardiac collapse which may be put down to exhaustion, in which unfavourable weather conditions, an excessive workload and the use of the medicines of the type discovered on the victim may have played a part." Unfavourable weather conditions meant temperatures way above 100 degrees and an "excessive workload" meant another routine day in the saddle for the riders on the Tour de France. That year's Tour, more than 3,000 miles, was one of the longest on record.

The report continued: "The dose of amphetamine ingested by Simpson could not have led to his death on its own; but... it could have led him to go beyond the limit of his strength and thus bring on the appearance of certain troubles linked to exhaustion." Certain troubles? Fuelled by a bizarre cocktail of stimulants and brandy, driven on by forces beyond his control, Simpson died on the upper slopes of Mont Ventoux on 13 July, 1967.

The circumstances of Simpson's death have been enshrined in the folklore of the sport, interpreted variously as the ultimate sacrifice of a slave of the road, the logical conclusion of a life lived precariously close to the edge or the final, grubby, act of a cheat. Nothing in the intervening years has done anything to demystify the events of that steamy afternoon in the Alps. Indeed, those close to Simpson have often done their best to perpetuate the confusion.

Until now, there has been no objective account of the life of Britain's greatest road racer, only hagiography, and anyone with the faintest understanding of sport knows that most sporting heroes fall well short of saintliness. Simpson, a miner's son from Durham, was no exception. To say he was a contradiction goes beyond understatement. He was, as the Flemish say, a deugnet, a rogue, a lovable rascal. He was also a British world road-racing champion at a time when cycling champions came exclusively from continental Europe, the winner of several classics, including the Tour of Lombardy and the Tour of Flanders, and a track cyclist good enough to win an Olympic bronze.

He was also the ultimate realist, a consummate professional, a meticulous man who measured success by the size of his bank balance, a playboy, a hermit, a neurotic, a property speculator, a pioneer and a dreamer. On his bike, Simpson was a ruthless calculator of the odds; off it, he peddled outrageous schemes, including buying a house in Corsica with a "tree growing through it" and a train with a carriage which would act as a second home. Simpson was one of the first cyclists to explore the realms of diet and nutrition. If there was an edge to be had in any aspect of training or preparation, Simpson would be prepared to explore it. Yet he also believed that sitting in ice-cold water would toughen up the backside for long days in the saddle. All these many contradictions are revealed in the first objective biography of Simpson, written by William Fotheringham, the cycling correspondent of the Guardian, and published last month. It is an excellent book, the product of passion and duty, sponsors of the best biography.

Fotheringham knows his cycling, loves it and like so many followers of the sport is bemused by its persistent attempts at self-destruction, the latest of which, the discovery of a boot full of drugs in a car driven by the wife of the Lithuanian rider placed third in the Tour de France, has teetered on the brink of farce. Like so many of us, Simpson was a hero to the author. But, unlike many in his sport, who would prefer that the whole horrid business go away or that at the very least journalists would stop spoiling all the fun by trying to write the truth, Fotheringham has tackled the issue of Simpson's drug-taking head on. Was he a misguided follower of fashion or a wholehearted cheat?

It would doubtless amuse Simpson to know that not much has changed. In the past 10 days the head coach of British swimming has talked of a potential return to the drug culture of the old East Germany, and the European Athletics Championships have been peppered with accusations and rumours of drug-taking. A runner only has to disappear into the distance, as Jolanda Ceplak did in the 800m and our own Paula Radcliffe did in winning the 10,000m, for the muttering to start.

Radcliffe rightly had to answer the enquiries of non-British writers who wanted to know how it was that she had suddenly bettered her time for the 5,000m, won the London Marathon and smashed the European 10,000m record, all in the space of a few months and at an age at which natural improvement would seem unlikely. Radcliffe wears a red ribbon on her vest in support of blood-testing and famously held up a banner denouncing "EPO cheats out" at the World Championships in Edmonton last year. At her press conference, she said she was happy to have the results of her tests released. If anyone in athletics is clean, it is Radcliffe. But, in the current state of confusion, she must have felt like the one in the dock.

Simpson took amphetamines. Accord-ing to some of his room-mates, this was not just a random act of desperation at the end of a bad day. Before the Tour, Simpson had gone into the local car showroom and put down a deposit on a top- of-the-range Mercedes, just so, as he put it, he had "something to aim at" when he was struggling through the Alps. But, in 1967, the dividing line between clean and dirty was even more blurred than it is now. Drug-taking had only recently been outlawed by the cycling authorities and the péloton, led by Jacques Anquetil, five times winner of the Tour, was fiercely opposed to the introduction of drugs tests. These were the days, remember, when riders were expected to pedal for 11 hours on a stage, often in broiling heat, without being allowed to take water from their team cars, and when the accepted wisdom among the riders was that dehydration was good for you.

Times were so different, yet the essential division between the cheat and the hero remains much the same. Kim Collins of St Kitts and Nevis takes salbutamol and escapes a ban on the grounds that the fastest man in the Commonwealth is a clinically diagnosed asthmatic, while Alain Baxter, the Scottish slalomist who tested positive for a banned substance found in a nasal decongestant, was deprived of his Olympic bronze and banned for six months. A suspicious number of professional cyclists, some of the fittest athletes in sport, have been diagnosed as asthmatics, which is both curious and laughable.

The death of Tommy Simpson was not just a parable of the Sixties, it was a morality tale which has endured into the following century. Fotheringham reveals Simpson to be a regular drug-taker, but there is no joy in the revelation because the author meticulously details the professional and personal pressures which were starting to destroy the man. Victim or cheat? Only a fool would presume to make the judgement, and Fotheringham is no fool. Many Simpson loyalists refuse to discuss the issue or find a thousand different reasons for Simpson's death, all of them absolving their hero from any blame. One journalist, a great friend of Simpson's, wrote that the drugs only served to "relieve him of much of the pain and suffering".

The lasting legacy of Simpson's death lies on the forbidding slopes of Mont Ventoux, which has become a shrine to cyclists from all over the world. That, a dispassionate statement from the medical authorities and a line from Simpson himself delivered during a BBC documentary entitled The World of Tom Simpson. "Professional cycling is a bit of a rat race," said Simpson. "But if I'm one of the top rats I can bear it."

'Put Me Back On My Bike: In Search Of Tom Simpson', by William Fotheringham, is published by Yellow Jersey Press, £15.99.