Former pro Luke Rowe revealed in his podcast Watts Occurring how he dealt with riders who had been caught doping. The Brit said he tried to make their lives in the peloton 'a living hell.' "You could really bully those guys right out of the sport."
"If someone was caught, and it was really black and white that he was a cheater, I just rode straight through him. I did everything I could to get at them," Rowe said. "I don’t understand why others didn’t do it. I made their life a living hell. Because, in my opinion, they didn’t deserve to come back. Sometimes they yelled back, but mostly they didn’t, because they had no leg to stand on. You cheated me and the sport: 'Fuck you,' I thought. I think every rider had the same mentality."
According to Rowe, serving a doping ban wasn’t enough, he explains. "You’re just a bastard if you come back into the sport. When you line up there with 160 guys, everyone treats you like a piece of shit. That’s what you deserve in my eyes. If you’re treated like that, you don’t want to hang around in such a peloton anymore. You could really bully those guys out of the sport. Back to where they belong."
Rowe, who was a team director at Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale this year, does not mention any names in the podcast. However, he has spoken about suspended riders before. For instance, last year he called Nairo Quintana a 'rat.'
