"In a single year, it really accelerated", notes Arnaud Démare who refuses, however, to use the word doping.

"It's normal, everyone is working, everyone is progressing, so is the equipment", adds the rider who wins the most of the French peloton (84 successes) who was surprised by the echo made to his questions.

"I wonder about the peloton," he said at the end of October in an interview with Le Parisien.

“Not everyone has the same restrictions on certain products such as ketones. I am part of a team (Groupama-FDJ) which, like others, has made commitments. like us".

Ketones, an additional fuel for muscles that is ingested in the form of a gel or drink, are not recommended by the International Cycling Union (UCI) but their intake is not prohibited by the regulation.

"Too much time" for Bardet

The medical director of the UCI, who mentioned a possible placebo effect, drew a parallel about them with creatine, another substance that was the subject of discussion about twenty years ago.

In fact, while creatine was the subject of controversy at the time, cheaters used proven doping products, undetected as micro-doses of EPO can still be today.

The skeptics' camp was reinforced by the opinion of Romain Bardet, also in decline in the hierarchy as regards the big laps (7th of the Giro).

The French insisted on corticosteroids, which will be completely banned in competition in 2022, and on ketones.

"It always takes too long before realizing that you have to be strict on certain points", estimated Bardet last month with the specialized site cyclingnews.

The cycling community had just learned that three riders checked by French investigators during the Tour would have used a powerful drug (tizanidine), a muscle relaxant which is not prohibited by the regulations of the World Anti-Doping Agency.

Frenchman Romain Bardet, from the DSM team, before the start of the 115th edition of the Tour of Lombardy, a 239 km cycling race, from Como to Bergamo, on October 9, 2021. Marco BERTORELLO AFP

"The laws are too permissive," Bardet insisted of the products on which the peloton is divided.

The teams belonging to the Movement for a Credible Cycling (MPCC) refuse to use them, the others do not.

"It's up to the anti-doping authorities to decide whether it's banned or not and that's the problem, because there is this gray area."

"We have to live with these questions"

If Bardet also wondered about the number of out-of-competition controls that he considers insufficient, other riders, AFP learned, alerted the UCI at the end of the season.

They expressed their perplexity over what was once called two-speed cycling.

As lucid as he is balanced, Guillaume Martin, runner with an immaculate reputation, preferred to take a step back in an interview with Ouest-France: "When we are overwhelmed, when we have less good results, we always seek explanations, it is Human. One of the easy explanations is that other people cheat somehow. " And to remind: "High-level cycling is so much about details that you may not know why. (...) I don't spend my time comparing myself and resenting what others are doing. can do."

Faced with these controversies, fueled by performances as astounding as those of the Ukrainian Mark Padun (Bahrain) at the Critérium du Dauphiné, the two-time winner of the Tour, the Slovenian Tadej Pogacar, kicked in touch.

"Cycling has a dark past," he repeated recently.

"We have to live with these questions and these suspicions. Even if, I admit, it is strange for me because I was born in 1998. I have no memory of this dark period of cycling."

The defending champion, the Slovenian Tadej Pogacar, during the official presentation of the Tour de France 2022, in Paris, October 14, 2021. Anne-Christine POUJOULAT AFP

On himself, on the reasons for his dominance at the Tour de France, Pogacar chose to joke: "I guess I have to thank my parents for the good genes."

© 2021 AFP