One woman leads a crusade to cleanup cycling in Germany

Sylvia Schenk, a lawyer and former Olympic runner, is trying to rid sports of drugs by getting sponsors to force athletes to submit to testing.

from the July 14, 2008 edition

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Older riders often remain in the sport to become trainers and masseurs, adding to the cycling world's insularity. "The first lesson athletes get is, 'Don't get caught,' " says Mr. Treutlein. " 'If you get caught, shut your mouth and accept your punishment. Then we take you back in the family.' "

Schenk eventually ran into the wall of silence – hard. Three years into her tenure, she says she learned that the federation, without her knowledge, had let rider Christian Lademann race at the 2004 Athens Olympics after an unusual blood-test result that the German national team's doctor said could have been caused by EPO. She believed the rider should have been kept home pending a probe. "When I tried to fire the person responsible, the entire organization said, 'It isn't that bad; we don't want to make a big fuss about it," says Schenk. "That was against my principles of 100 percent transparency, so I resigned."

Others say she had no choice: She had lost the support of the board and had to leave.

A year after her departure, while still a board member of the International Cycling Union (UCI), she lashed out at the group for lax oversight. She was effectively shut out of meetings until her term expired. Critics fault her for being calculating and uncompromising. "Sylvia Schenk had personal ambitions to become the president of the UCI," says Pat McQuaid, who did become UCI president. "When she saw she didn't get the support of the UCI, she attacked it."

In 2007, the dike of denial sprung a leak. Several prominent riders, along with trainers, masseurs, and doctors, confessed to having used or administered EPO in the 1990s. Significantly, Germany's two biggest TV stations pulled their coverage of the Tour de France mid-race in protest of the doping issue.

For Germany, it was a fall from grace. For Schenk, it was something of a vindication. "The fact that now a few cyclists were so under pressure that they saw that the only chance to save their skin was to confess ... made it clear you can't push the issue under the table," she says.

The issue became a cause célèbre. The German government doubled its antidoping budget. "The publicity surrounding the cases had a better effect than all the arguments we had for years," says Hans Geyer, founder of the German Sport University's antidoping laboratory in Cologne. "Politicians woke up. The public woke up."

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Schenk glides up on her black Intra bicycle, looking elegant but sporty in a pants suit that could have been designed by Yves Saint Laurent. She flips down the kickstand. Her clients are waiting – five men in crisp three-piece suits.

The business motif is appropriate: If there's one word to sum up Schenk's current antidoping focus, it is money. Stop the money from flowing to those who take drugs and you stop the problem. She cites estimates that some athletes have spent up to €100,000 ($157,000) on doping during their careers.

"Obviously, you have to take the money out to make people think, and take away the financial means to dope," she says.

Sponsors seem to agree. Volkswagen withdrew its support of a major cycling event, the Lower Saxony Round Tour, after allegations surfaced of doping at the Tour de France. More recently, the government of the state of Rhine Palatinate called off a big regional race. "We feel compelled to send a clear message," the sport's premier said.

Schenk doesn't want to drain money from the sport; she just wants strings attached to the euros. In her roles as chairman of the watchdog group Transparency International and as a private lawyer, she advises firms on how to design underwriting deals with antidoping clauses. One example: Sponsors set aside funds for unannounced drug tests and hold other money in reserve to ensure the athletes remain clean.

More broadly, Schenk is heartened by what she sees as a moral awakening across Germany, spawned in part by recent corruption scandals in business. "The public's view has changed," she says. "The aspiration for morality, for real cleanness, is greater. And that has an impact on sport."

• The next installment in this series runs July 21.

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