Odd moments from the races · Tour de France · 1978
The condom that cost Pollentier the yellow jersey
Michel Pollentier won on Alpe d’Huez and took yellow. That evening, a container of someone else’s urine cost him both the stage and the Tour.
Michel Pollentier won on Alpe d’Huez and took yellow. That evening, a container of someone else’s urine cost him both the stage and the Tour.
Yellow at the summit
On Sunday 16 July 1978, the Tour de France travelled from Saint-Étienne to Alpe d’Huez. Michel Pollentier won the stage and took the yellow jersey at the same time. At the summit stood a Belgian with both the stage and the race lead. The evening should have held flowers, interviews and a quick shower. Instead, there was a doping control.
The control after the finish
Pollentier struggled to provide his sample. Beneath his jersey sat a small container of urine that was not meant to have come from him. A tube ran from the container towards his shorts. The idea was simple enough: the official would see a stream and receive a filled glass. The apparatus raised suspicion, however, and the doctor took a closer look.
A condom or a rubber bulb
In the story later told around cycling, the container became a condom. It is certainly the word that has travelled best. The contemporary French newspaper Le Monde described it more prosaically as a rubber bulb hidden beneath the jersey. Whether the precise container was one or the other matters less than its purpose. The urine was meant to look as though it came from Pollentier. It did not.
The jersey changed shoulders before dinner
At about eight o’clock the news emerged: Pollentier had been caught trying to cheat the control and was expelled from the Tour. Hennie Kuiper inherited the stage victory. Joop Zoetemelk inherited the yellow jersey. Not one extra kilometre had to be raced to change both results. A doctor, a tube and a container had done the work.
More than a positive test
The remarkable part was not that 1970s cycle racing knew doping. It did. The remarkable part was the small piece of homemade mechanics beneath the jersey. It did not try to hide a substance in the body, but to replace the evidence itself. Rubber, tubing and borrowed urine were meant to make the control blind. It was not pretty, and this time it did not work.
A brief time in yellow
Pollentier was a major rider and had already won the Giro d’Italia. Yet his few hours as Tour leader came to be remembered better than many of his victories. First up Alpe d’Huez. Then down from the podium and into the control room. The yellow jersey had barely become his before the small container beneath his jersey cost him it again.
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