The Spin: What's the future of cycling and performance-enhancing drugs?

by Doug Kirk

Recent revelations of blood doping by Lance Armstrong and others are just the latest chapter in a saga plaguing all our favorite sports pitting users of performance-enhancing drugs against drug-testers and clean competitors. Accusations and denials, liars and cheats, a fan can't help but wonder where it's all headed. In The Spin we find out. It's 2033 and bike racing has cleaned itself up. No pro has tested positive for twenty years. Out of the blue, a major pharmaceutical manufacturer antes up big money to sponsor a new top-level European racing team. Why? And why would it hire Edo, a very vocal reformed cheater as team director if it had anything up its sleeve? Who's that eye-popping American woman chatting him up? And what's the deal with that new kid's pedaling? The answers are down the road for Freddie Mertz and his Pharmascrip teammates in a strange and thought-provoking spring of European road racing, culminating with Italy's own three-week tour, the Giro d' Italia.

374 pages, Paperback

First published January 16, 2013

About the author

Resides in Kalamazoo, Michigan.