Cheats cost me, says Power

An Irish cyclist who raced against Lance Armstrong last night blasted the shamed American doper.

Former national champion and two-time winner of the Rás, Ciarán Power, slammed the Texan for his role in destroying many promising careers.

Power, 36, rode for the Linda McCartney Racing Team in the US and regularly faced Armstrong who he recalled was “on a different level to most riders”.

The Waterford man declared: “I was never going to win the Tour de France or probably never win any classics or anything like that but I definitely could have forged a better career and more successful career and more financially secure career had it been a level playing field.

“At the end of the day, professional cycling is about winning. It’s a job. It’s about doing what you can to pay bills. I had a big mortgage to pay, three kids to feed and bills to pay and if you’re not making money, if you can’t keep up with those on EPO or growth hormone or whatever, that’s putting you under pressure. So it comes back to the point that if you’re taking drugs, you’re taking money from people. Hopefully he loses everything for what he has done. Obviously he was on a different level to most riders, including myself at the time, and now we all know why.

“The times I raced against Lance, it was usually in the early season and he probably wasn’t as doped as he would’ve been for the Tour but he was still always able to look at someone any day in a race and say ‘I’ll catch you at the top if I want’. It affected me hugely in that I raced the Olympics against him and he would have had a similar influence on those races.

“I finished 13th in the Athens Games in 2004, for example, and I know there were guys ahead of me who were on drugs so whatever happens to Armstrong, I have no sympathy. He, and more like him, have realistically taken opportunities from me. I just thought of what money I could earn from that race (in Athens) if I had been higher. So anyone whose taken drugs, has taken money off me so I wouldn’t have sympathy for any of them.”

Power retired from the sport in 2008 after a stint in France and Ireland but at such a relatively young age, he left with a clear conscience.

“When I finished, my head was just melted with cycling and I actually was completely burnt out, mentally and physically. Even at the age of 32, I was happy to hang up the wheels. Unfortunately, I had no previous education or qualifications to see me earn any money so I went from doing interviews on RTÉ at the Tour of Ireland, being this cool pro-cyclist to going straight into a minimum wage job on the Monday afterwards,” said Power, now sponsored by Kinetixproducts and running his own sports therapy practice in his home city.

“That was quite hard. But I can hold my head up high and I don’t have any fear of anyone saying ‘I remember a day when you took drugs’ because it was never a factor in my life.”