When he propels his mountain bike over roots and through ditches in the forest, Peter Riis Andersen is no longer up at the front of the pack.<\/p>\n
He no longer has a license to race the elite races, and only rides for fun.<\/p>\n
Denmark has sported several icons of mountain bike racing, and Peter Riis used to be one of them. But back in 2008, for the second time on his way to the Olympic Games, a test revealed he had been using the performance-enhancing drug EPO.<\/p>\n
He admitted, haltingly, at a press conference, that he had cheated, and that he did it in a short period because he had \u00bbdelivered average results, that were under the level which I normally represent\u00ab. <\/p>\n
Now, in the wake of a two year suspension from racing, sporting ambitions have been replaced by medical textbooks. And a new life, he tells the University Post.<\/p>\n
\u00bbI have been through a personal transformation, and I am happy for it. So is adversity, it changes you. It is existential: My former identity was changed from one day to the next. And I had to find out who the hell I was\u00ab.<\/p>\n
The professional athlete, who intermittently followed his medical studies while upholding a gruelling 20 to 25 hour-a-week training and competition regimen, is now someone else.<\/p>\n
He could, technically speaking, become the same fast Peter Riis as he was before, he reckons. Indeed, right after his two-year ban, he got back his license to race. As he puts it: \u00bbIn the course of two years you can get very hungry\u00ab.<\/p>\n
But the hunger for bike racing was never quite enough to get Peter Riis seriously back in the saddle.<\/p>\n
\u00bbI have enough on my hands just becoming a doctor now. One thing is the training. This you can just about handle, so long as you don\u2019t have children. But the travelling: Being away from lectures, waking up in an airport hotel in Z\u00fcrich, flying home to Copenhagen and going directly on to campus. It is tough with these switches in focus. Bike racing is intense, and you can\u2019t just press the \u2019off\u2019 button.\u00ab<\/p>\n
New doping controls, always keeping track of riders\u2019 whereabouts, don\u2019t fit the lifestyle of someone who no longer lives and breathes for the sport.<\/p>\n
\u00bbLast year, with a license, I had to constantly think about where I was. All the time! So when I have been having some drinks down at the student bar Friday night, should I then have to think about where I am going to be the next morning, because they might turn up? A license to race? No, I couldn\u2019t be bothered!\u00ab<\/p>\n
Back in 2008, which according to Peter Riis was the only year in which he doped, he got the EPO by way of the criminal underground, never through his contacts at university.<\/p>\n
Neither was it his study of medicine that pushed him across the threshold of doping sin, he argues.<\/p>\n
Of course he had his medical knowledge of the drugs, and the fact that as a medical student he was acquainted with the needles. \u00bbBut I would have been, if I was a laboratory assistant too,\u00ab he says.<\/p>\n
In the meantime, relief from the moral hangover has been forthcoming.<\/p>\n
Former German colleagues from his professional team ALB Gold lost their jobs because of Peter Riis\u2019 doping. Some German acquaintances \u00bbcalled me an idiot\u00ab, says Peter Riis. <\/p>\n
But they are about the only negative comments he has faced since the doping-revelation of 2008. Former colleagues from ALB Gold have since got new contracts, and none of them were put under suspicion as a result of what Peter Riis did, he says.<\/p>\n
In the Danish sports world, paradoxically, Peter Riis is almost seen as the victim, not the criminal. He points to the fact that he enjoys widespread sympathy, and that he admitted the doping credibly, and quickly.<\/p>\n
\u00bbMost people actually felt sorry for me. There are a lot of people who realise that they will never understand the cycling world. They don\u2019t know why I would bike 200 kilometres on a cold and wet February day, and they don\u2019t understand why I injected myself with needles and broke the rules. But nevertheless they have said: \u2018OK, this is not our world, but I like the person.\u2019 This, I have experienced a surprising number of times.\u00ab<\/p>\n
\u00bbThose that have reacted the harshest, have been those that I would call the \u2018amateur\u2019 riders. They think they know everything about bike racing, and they think that the only reason I could ride away from them, is because I took the drugs,\u00ab he says.<\/p>\n
Peter Riis strives to be in medical practice rather than research, maybe as an ear, nose and throat doctor.<\/p>\n
\u00bbI want to be in contact with patients, basically because it gives satisfaction doing things for other people, and curing the sick,\u00ab he says.<\/p>\n
Peter Riis still has his indoor bike in the office which he shares with two other medical students at the Faculty of Health\u2019s Panum Institute.<\/p>\n
He trains on it every now and again. But the little red gadget on the handlebars will typically show about 15 per cent less power going through the pedals than three years ago.<\/p>\n
Recently, at the Dust Cup, an amateur mountain bike race series in the forests north of Copenhagen, 28 other riders came over the finish line before Peter Riis.<\/p>\n
It is hard to put into words what makes the sport so intense and so compelling.<\/p>\n
\u00bbIn the forest, if there is a bear after you, you will mobilise all your energy, and run as fast as you can. Mountain bike races are like having this bear after you. But it is not the fear of the bear, that is mobilising your energy, but the competition itself. It is this, in the competition, that all your training, all your suffering, is finally put to the test,\u00ab he says.<\/p>\n