Rachel Dard

Rachel Dard (born 2 September 1951) was a French professional cyclist said to have raced across France to avoid a positive dope finding and ended up in a row which exposed organised drug-taking in cycling in the 1970s. His sporting career began with ACBB Paris.

Dope test Dard was riding for Peugeot in 1976. Maurice De Muer was the manager, Bernard Thévenet the star rider and François Bellocq the doctor. At the start of that year the team rode L'Étoile des Espoirs, a stage race in south-west France. Jean-Luc Vandenbroucke was race leader and Dard, his teammate, had won the stage to Dax.

Dard and a further teammate, Bourreau, were called for a dope test. Both were caught trying to defraud the control with a condom of untainted urine in their shorts to give the impression they were urinating.

Dard, it was reported, left the control room and then realised that his place in the race, perhaps his team, were over before the season had properly started. He found the doctor, Bruno Chaumont, and begged him not to report the positive. Chaumont agreed to burn the reports. Dard then realised that while there may be no positive report, the absence of a report meant there had been no test either. He would have to explain why Chaumont had returned to the French federation with two empty bottles identified as his.

Revelations Weeks passed and nothing happened. Then L'Équipe coincidentally ran a story about dope-taking in French cycling. Chaumont told the tale. Dard now had nothing more to lose, so he too went to L'Équipe and spilled the inside story, right down to providing the prescriptions for dope that Bellocq, the team doctor, had given him. He said riders treated with cortisone and steroids were now in "a pitiful state".

Row A row then broke out between Dard and the doctor. Dard said: I never cheated. Everything is false, from beginning to end. There never were any empty bottles. I never had a morning meeting at Austerlitz station. My car is a 504 diesel and I'd never have been able to drive from Dax to Paris at the speed of a train. Bernard Thévenet accused him of ruining his career.

Aftermath Bellocq was banned from working for the French federation, although he continued to work for teams. Chaumont, too, was disciplined by the Fédération Française de Cyclisme.

Peugeot was in no moral position to fire Dard. He raced at least once again but de Muer told him he would never ride anything better than third-rate events. Dard left the team and racing at the end of his contract. He opened a bike shop in Saint-Germain-du-Plain in Burgundy.