{"id":2058875,"date":"2026-07-23T11:32:20","date_gmt":"2026-07-23T08:32:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2058875"},"modified":"2026-07-23T11:32:20","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T08:32:20","slug":"weddings-taxis-and-video-games-the-tour-pelotons-funniest-drug-test-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2058875","title":{"rendered":"Weddings, Taxis and Video Games: The Tour Peloton\u2019s Funniest Drug Test Stories"},"content":{"rendered":"
Jonas Vingegaard and Tadej Poga\u010dar getting woken up at 2 a.m. and 5 a.m. for International Testing Agency (ITA) mid-race tests has made headlines during the last week of the Tour de France.<\/p>\n
However, those would probably not even make it into the professional peloton\u2019s top 100 stories for strangest doping test moments.<\/p>\n
Given WADA Whereabouts rules and in-competition testing, every rider in the UCI Registered Testing Pool has to be available for random, unannounced potential testing every day of the year. The tests are carried out by the ITA\u2019s doping control officers (DCO).<\/p>\n
Cyclists provide a specific hour-long time slot each day when they guarantee their availability, which can be amended any time before it starts.<\/p>\n
With many, often quickly-changing travel plans, it is a daily feat of administration, planning and updating. It also means that any moment of everyday life can be interrupted \u2013 sometimes when the WorldTour\u2019s stars least expect it.<\/p>\n
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Going to the chapel, going to get tested<\/h2>\n2015 Milan-Sanremo winner John Degenkolb has an amusing anti-doping anecdote.<\/span> (Photo: Szymon Gruchalski\/Getty Images))<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\u201cProbably the most iconic one was when I attended the wedding of my teammate Koen de Kort in Girona,\u201d former Paris-Roubaix winner John Degenkolb (Picnic PostNL) tells Velo<\/i>. \u201cDuring the ceremony basically, the chaperone turned up and did a doping control with me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Speaking of the August 2015 event, Degenkolb added: \u201cWe are having a walk through Girona, doing photos with the wedding dress and so on and suddenly he was standing next to me.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the end, it was also a bit my fault not filling in that there was a wedding that day. It was all fine: it\u2019s also part of the game.<\/p>\n
\u201cHonestly, I cannot really complain about the tests. I think also as a clean athlete, you are the one who benefits from them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sepp Kuss\u2019 emergency taxi<\/h2>\nSepp Kuss: saved by quick thinking and four wheels. (Photo: Tim de Waele\/Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Sometimes, riders are at the mercy of luck. \u201cI was leaving somewhere for my birthday party or something, then the car broke down,\u201d Visma-Lease a Bike super domestique Sepp Kuss tells Velo<\/i>. \u201cMy friend was staying at my house and told me that the doping control officer was there, then I had to rush back.\u201d<\/p>\n
The American indicated that he had to get a taxi home: \u201cIt was many years ago, but at the end of the day, nobody wants to put each other in a bad position. You have to see the human side of it and not put someone between a rock and a hard place.<\/p>\n
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\u201cWe all want to be there, do a control and make it as clean a sport as possible. Sometimes, you find yourself in interesting situations!\u201d<\/p>\n
George Bennett\u2019s mum saves the day<\/h2>\nGeorge Bennett at the Tour de France this year. (Photo by Gautier Demouveaux\/NurPhoto via Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
New Zealand road race champion George Bennett remembers his weirdest scenario well. He was on a big night out partying during the winter off-season in 2014 and had given between 6 a.m. to 7 a.m. as his testing window.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy mum was over from New Zealand, staying with me. At six, I still wasn\u2019t home yet and she called me, \u2018where are you? The drug tester\u2019s here.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Obviously, Bennett did not want it to go down as a missed test: \u201cI remember sprinting home, hardly able to walk, getting through the door and trying to piss in the cup. That was back when cycling was a different time. I was with Liquigas, having a month off the bike.\u201d<\/p>\n
The NSN Cycling Team rider says that it can be bizarre when doping control officers turn up when he is at home with friends who know nothing about pro cycling.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was in an Airbnb with a bunch of school mates and the drug testers came and the shock \u2026 that\u2019s when you realize how strange it is,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
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\u201cWhen other people are like, \u2018what\u2019s going on here?\u2019 and you\u2019re like, \u2018this is normal.\u2019<\/p>\n
Beaten by the drug tester at video games<\/h2>\n
The New Zealander also had one doping test where he could not urinate so he played soccer console game FIFA with the tester for a while on the Playstation while waiting.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was better than me at it,\u201d Bennett says.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt [the doping test] is a weird thing so it always throws up weird situations.\u201d<\/p>\n
French climber Aur\u00e9lien Paret-Peintre (Decathlon CMA CGM Team) is not such a fan of the blood tests because he sometimes faints. Not very handy on a race rest day.<\/p>\n
Bottle of wine and a doping test<\/h2>\n
Meanwhile, Jayco-Alula star Ben O\u2019Connor has had dinner parties with a few bottles of wine on the table when the doping control officer shows up. While sometimes it can take as little as half an hour to do a blood test and follow the procedure, it is a bit of a mood dampener.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s one of those shitty things where you do everything right, there\u2019s clearly people who do things wrong and we have to cop the consequences of anti-doping because of their values and morals,\u201d O\u2019Connor says.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI don\u2019t think [star golfer Rory] McIlroy is being woken up at two in the morning before playing the final round of the U.S. Open.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not really fair, is it?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/velo-cdn.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/GettyImages-2278782513-scaled.jpg”] Andy McGrath Updated July 23, 2026 08:29AM Jonas Vingegaard and Tadej Poga\u010dar getting woken up at 2 a.m. and 5 a.m. for International Testing Agency (ITA) mid-race tests has made headlines during the last week of the Tour de France. However, those would probably not even make it into the professional peloton\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[226,71],"class_list":["post-2058875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-crawlmanager","tag-velo-outsideonline-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2058875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2058875"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2058875\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2058875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2058875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2058875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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