Too many, too young

Riders and officials remember Frederick Nolf (Getty)

Too many cyclists have died at too young an age for the issues raised by Frederick Nolf’s death at the Tour of Qatar to just be shrugged off as an occupational hazard.

Sadly the passing of the 21-year-old Belgian just adds another name to a long and tragic list of cyclists who have die in their sleep in the prime of their life.

Although the cause of his death is yet to be confirmed there will be unavoidable speculation and debate.

Over the next week or so no doubt you will hear from many within cycling’s inner sanctum trying to rationalise Nolf’s death by finding some family history of heart attack or another genetic reason for his premature passing.

Meanwhile media outlets around the world will be rolling out the long list of cyclists who have died in similar circumstances, marry it up with the litany of positive doping results from last year’s Tour de France and smugly stick the boots in.

Even if Nolf is a genuine case of a genetic glitch that had nothing to do with performance enhancing drugs, his death will do further damage to cycling’s already severely wounded reputation.

Nolf’s death reminders me of a young Frenchman, by the name of Sebastien Grousselle, who I regularly trained with and raced against when riding in France as an amateur in 1997.

Grousselle died in a race in 1998 at the age of 21.

The autopsy showed that he had a heart attack during the race prior to crashing. The toxicology report included a long list of banned substances, which on hearing of his death, sadly, didn’t come as a great surprise.

But Sebastien wasn’t a bad guy. Overall he was a good guy who made some bad decisions.

His death changed my view on drug testing from being one of creating an even playing field to one of protecting desperate athletes from themselves in the interest of their long-term health.

The greatest shame of Sebastien’s death was that after a few days of media hysteria in France nothing changed within cycling.

Even if Nolf’s autopsy comes up squeaky-clean hopefully this reminder of all the others, who have died due to the use of performance enhancing drugs, further strengthens the efforts of all the various anti-doping agencies around the world.

The ASO had the right idea at the 2007 Tour de France when they kicked an entire team out of the race if one rider from that team tested positive, as was the case with Astana and Cofidis.

This creates some innocent victims missing out on an opportunity to finish the race but it has the greatest chance of preventing those same innocent victims from joining the list of men who are no longer with us.

Plus this approach will force team management, who are arguably the most important piece in the anti-doping jigsaw, to act.

If the team isn’t able to ride the biggest races the sponsor won’t hang around and team management will be without a job.

As our former Prime Minister, Paul Keating, once said “always back self-interest because at least you know it’s trying�. Suspending teams for individual doping offences puts anti-doping squarely in the category of self-interest for team management.

Suspending teams will also create a culture within the teams where the peer group pressure is to race clean, not the other way around.

Fingers crossed, the anti-doping progress of the past two years continues.

In the meantime my condolences go to the family and friends of Frederick Nolf, regardless of the autopsy results.