Taylor Phinney: Cycling was “f*cked up”; Rusty Raleigh Chopper sells for £700; “We are not the Netherlands”; Cyclists are entitled…to get home alive; Tell me you’re a cyclist without telling me you’re a cyclist; Big Mamil Energy + more on the live blog

Former American pro Taylor Phinney has opened up about drug abuse and the culture of silence in the peloton in a revealing interview for the ‘Outspoken’ Thereabouts podcast. 

Phinney, the son of ex-7 Eleven rider Davis Phinney and Olympic gold medallist Connie Carpenter, retired in 2019 at just 29 after nine years as a professional at BMC and EF Education First.

His stage win and stint in the pink jersey at the 2012 Giro d’Italia cemented his status as American cycling’s next big thing as it emerged blinking from the Lance Armstrong era and forced to deal with the aftershocks of the Texan’s doping confession less than nine months after Phinney’s Italian triumph.

> Giro d'Italia Stage 1: Phinney flies to time trial win, Team Sky's Thomas second

Despite his undoubted talent Phinney generally failed up to the high expectations placed upon him after his 2012 breakthrough, which also included a career-high silver medal at the world time trial championships and fourth place in both the road race and time trial at the London Olympics, largely due to the after-effects of a career-threatening injury sustained in a crash at the 2014 US road race championships.

Never a conformist, Phinney often cut an eccentric figure in the conservative, insular world of professional cycling.

In the candid podcast interview, he revealed how his outspoken nature often got him in trouble with team management, especially when it came to doping, which Phinney says was still rampant even during what is generally perceived to be the post-EPO era.

“There was a time when I was quite outspoken about finish bottles in races,” he said. “When I first started racing the EPO and blood doping era was seemingly past but there was still a huge amount of opiate abuse in the sport.

“I don’t know if that has completely gone away but it was pretty widespread in my first couple of years that you would smash a couple of Tramadol at the end of the race, which is basically like taking a Vicodin or two along with a bunch of caffeine and maybe some Sudafed.

“That’s a bomb right there, if I took one of those right now it would send me to the moon. I was never into that. I would get offered that, but I was like I don’t think I need an opiate painkiller today to get through this race.

“But [Tramadol abuse] was just a thing, especially in the Classics, so many of the guys were doing that. I was kind of like, ‘this is fucked up’.

“So I said some stuff about it in an interview, and then I also talked about how there was a fair amount of coincidentally timed cortisone injections being given to some people going into certain races.

“You don’t need it. If you need a cortisone injection you should be out for a while. Not like, I just got a cortisone injection and now I’m like, winning Flanders.”

Phinney said that he only received cortisone – the drug at the centre of Bradley Wiggins’ TUEs before the 2011 and 2012 Tours de France – after he broke his leg at the 2014 US Nationals.

“I was just flying and half of my leg didn’t work,” he said. “I was like, OK, I think I understand this now. I spoke out about that and I received quite a bit of backlash from the management.”

Phinney then talked about how the law of silence within cycling regarding doping – commonly known as the omertà – was still prevalent throughout his career and that he wrongly assumed that he would be celebrated for speaking out about some of the sport’s darker secrets.

After racing as a junior for Trek-Livestrong and then briefly as a stagiaire for Lance Armstrong’s Radioshack team, Phinney turned pro with BMC, where he was managed by Jim Ochowicz, the man in charge of Armstrong’s Motorola team in the mid-1990s. In 2017, he joined the Cannondale team owned by Jonathan Vaughters, a former teammate of the Texan known for his anti-doping stance.

He said: “I mean, of course, as an entitled young American, a confident young man, I was like of course I should be able to say whatever I want about this because in my mind this is wrong and that’s what you grow up reading about in the news. People talking about the things that are wrong and then hopefully the thing gets fixed.

“But once you’re inside of the machine and you start talking about the things that are wrong, and then those things are closely linked to where your paycheque is coming from.

“You’re in a position where people can tell you what to do and punish you for not obeying the most random rules that they can put in place at any point in time. You realise actually you’re not like Harry Potter, you’re not the hero of this story because you have to shut up.”

“I definitely struggled in my first couple of years just with feeling like I couldn’t express myself. Or that I wasn’t celebrated in the way I thought I should be for speaking out honestly about things I thought were wrong within the actual group of the peloton or management itself.

“Outside of that people were like ‘yay he’s speaking up’ against this or that. But within the group, there’s very much this ‘this is our secret, our world’.

“As the rider, because you go out to do the race, in your mind you think you are the most important person. It’s also everyone has this job to make you think you’re important. But you realize there are all these people above you holding these strings and you really have no power.

“You can’t do anything about it, they own your image rights. They own… they own you.”

Instead of asking who would like to travel like this, perhaps we should ask who wouldn’t? 🚲 pic.twitter.com/oOdX2fA1v0

— Dr. Natalia Barbour (@natalia_barbour) April 7, 2022

Thanks to @Pflax1 for creating this gem. Has already sparked multiple conversations today. Onward pic.twitter.com/5rxhLOVQLQ

— Josh Hare (@thejoshhare) April 6, 2022

A stylish t-shirt that doubles as pro-cycling propaganda? Count me in…

Journalist Peter Flax’s sartorial response to what he describes as the “feeble-minded pronouncement” that cyclists are ‘entitled’, simply because we want to get from A to B safely, is certainly a great conversation starter.

Promoting the t-shirt earlier this year, Flax said: “It’s time for bike riders to reappropriate the truth when it comes to entitlement. To take this misinformed invective and flip it into an anthem. Let’s be blunt: Cyclists may be entitled — but not in the way these idiots suggest.”

If you want to look cool, reframe a tired conversation, and troll anti-cycling motorists at the same time, you can buy the t-shirt from Flax’s website. 

Big mamil energy is some random bloke sitting on while I tow him at 30kph+ along the windy, flat section and then accelerating past me on the climb without saying a word. Well done to u.

— amylaurenjones (@amylaurenjones) April 7, 2022

I once had a mamil shout at me because he sat on my wheel when going up a climb and when I accelerated he was dropped. Stopped at the top to take a photo and he went off his head at me for going faster than him 🙃

— Kerry (@Kerry13_) April 7, 2022

Ugh, this happens to me aaaaall the time! Then I always do a little wave as I pass them once they’ve blown from their big effort up the hill just to pass me. Smugness overload.

— Charlotte Eleanor Broughton (@char_broughton) April 7, 2022

I was once pounding along into a strong headwind towards the hills on the Tour of the White Horses and started feeling pretty lonely. Looked behind and there are about 30 blokes sitting, no, cowering, behind me, got to the first hill and they all pushed off. Not one thanked me.

— The Mechanic (@hayres) April 8, 2022

 And on the other side of the coin:

One time I towed a group of older gentlemen almost the whole Schelde path from Gent to Oudenaarde into a block headwind and when I pulled off they all thanked me. I’ll never forget that.

— Laura Weislo-USA (@Laura_Weislo) April 7, 2022

Any of our readers have their own examples of encountering – or perhaps displaying – Big Mamil Energy?

(I was going to shorten it to BME, but an acronym within an acronym feels like too much…)

Come on, don’t be shy…