The following feature forms part of our 'I love the 1990s series' and sees Jonathan Vaughters open up about his first year in the European peloton and the doping culture ingrained in the sport at that time.
“Viva la quimica!” Long live the chemicals.
The 1990s have garnered infamy in professional cycling… and having raced in that decade, I can firmly testify that such infamy is well deserved. Professional cycling was the Wild West back then; financially, organizationally, medically… It was a time of honor among thieves at best and downright insanity at worst.
The mid-1990s were probably the worst time to be a professional rider with none of the charm and gentlemanly behaviour of earlier eras and all of the commercial pressure of later eras. Combs in the back pockets? Sharing cigarettes in races? Forget about it. This was the dawn of the age of big-money sponsor and big-money contracts.
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If you wanted to race professionally in the 1990s, you had to be a sporting survivor. A gritty and nasty bastard willing to hop a few fences to make it happen. Idealists were thrown out the passenger doors of team cars and left for dead in ditches. I would never choose it for anyone nor for myself. Unfortunately, we don’t get to choose when we are born, and I had a foolish dream to become a real bike racer.
My time in the 1990s and in professional cycling began via the road less traveled. As opposed to the route that most of my contemporaries in American cycling would take (US national team to Motorola and onward from there). I was destined for a much more uncomfortable trip. It started with me finishing second place overall in the 1993 Vuelta a Venezuela. This little result captured the attention of a startup Spanish team I’d never heard of.
A few awkward phone calls and faxes later, I signed a contract, of some sort, to go and race for an amateur team in Spain. I bought a one-way ticket to Spain with the last dollars I had to my name and watched my parents roll their eyes over this very poorly thought out idea.
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