A recent amateur race somewhere in continental Europe. Local masters event, the kind that finishes in a public square and ends with a barbecue. Over 180 riders start. Word travels through the bunch on lap two — drug testers are at the finish line. One hundred and thirty riders abandon mid-race. Fifty-two cross the line. The story made local news.
This is the version of the story that surfaced. The version that did not surface, in many countries and many race series, is the average week.
Anthony Walsh's episode on the dark side of masters racing is one of the most uncomfortable and necessary pieces in the Roadman archive. The Roadman audience is overwhelmingly serious masters cyclists in their 30s, 40s, and 50s. Many of you race. Some of you race against riders you have your suspicions about. The episode says out loud what most cycling content avoids — the doping problem in amateur cycling is real, documented, and structural. Pretending otherwise serves the cheats.
Listen to the full episode with Anthony →
This piece walks through the documented cases, the cultural conditions that make masters doping persist, and what riders and clubs can actually do.
The Documented Cases
The pro-cycling doping era is well-known. The amateur masters era is less visible because the cases get less coverage. The pattern is real and the names are public.
Andy Hastings. British masters national road race champion, 35 to 39 age category. Caught for two anabolic steroids at a UK time trial event after winning the masters title. Four-year ban from UK Anti-Doping. His public defence — that the steroids came from a borrowed needle he used to inject vitamin B12 at the gym — does not require comment. The ban stood. The result was scrubbed.
Dave Lese. 56-year-old U.S. masters racer. Won a cyclocross race in New York. Refused to provide a sample for testing afterward. Two-year ban, reduced from the standard four-year refusal sanction due to mitigating factors at arbitration. The result was stripped.
Craig Webb. 57-year-old U.S. masters mountain biker. Won his age group at the Iceman Cometh Challenge in Michigan, one of the largest mountain bike races in the U.S. calendar. Refused testing at the finish. Full four-year ban. Result stripped.
Kayle Leogrande. Former domestic pro who returned to masters racing in his 40s. Won the prestigious Dana Point Grand Prix in California in 2017. Tested positive for a remarkable cocktail of substances — an estrogen blocker, six anabolic and experimental drugs including multiple SARMs, a growth hormone booster, and the endurance drug GW1516, which had been withdrawn from medical development after causing cancer in lab rats. As a repeat offender, Leogrande received an eight-year ban from USADA. Effectively career-ending at his age.
These are the high-profile cases. There are quieter bans every year, mostly visible only to riders who read anti-doping agency reports. The pattern across all of them is the same. Middle-aged cyclists, with no money or contract on the line, choosing to introduce banned substances to their bodies for results in races where the prize is a plastic trophy.
Why Masters Cycling Has The Problem It Has
The motivations are not the same as professional doping. Pros at the elite level historically doped because of contracts, salaries, and the structural pressure of staying in the peloton. Masters racers do not have those incentives. The motivations are emotional, not financial.
Three drivers recur in every honest conversation on this topic.
One. The inability to accept age-related decline. The masters racer who used to be a Cat 2 in their twenties is now a Cat 3 in their forties, and the gap between who they used to be and who they are now eats at them. Pharmaceutical assistance promises a partial return to the previous version. The rationalisation that follows — the body needs help, my testosterone is low, the playing field is uneven anyway — provides cover.
Two. The visibility of doping in the surrounding culture. Masters cyclists who came up through the 1990s and 2000s saw the pro peloton normalise doping at the highest level. The lesson many of them took from that era was not "doping is wrong" — it was "doping is what serious cyclists do". The cultural permission structure is downstream of the era they grew up in.
Three. The accessibility of substances. TRT clinics, online sources for SARMs and peptides, grey-market suppliers for anabolic steroids — the supply side has industrialised over the past decade. The 2020s masters racer has more access to performance-enhancing substances than a 2000s pro had. The supply makes the demand visible.
The deeper emotional driver across all three is the one Anthony's framing lands on consistently. The masters racer who dopes is not chasing a result. They are chasing identity. The willingness to risk health, professional reputation, and in some jurisdictions criminal exposure for results in a local race only makes sense if the result is a stand-in for something else. Usually, that something else is the version of themselves they cannot accept losing.
For a more direct conversation on natural testosterone, ageing, and the legitimate cycling-relevant data, see the testosterone piece with Dr. Gordon. The legitimate medical territory is real. The masters-doping rationalisation is downstream of confusion about where that territory ends and self-prescribed enhancement begins.
The TRT Grey Area
Testosterone replacement therapy is the substance most masters cyclists rationalise.
The legitimate medical use of TRT exists. A small percentage of men have clinically low testosterone and benefit from supplementation under medical supervision. The intent is to bring testosterone levels back to physiological range — the band of values normal for a man of that age.
The competitive cycling problem is what happens outside that legitimate frame. Three patterns recur.
Pattern one — supraphysiological dosing. TRT prescribed at doses that produce testosterone levels above the normal physiological range, regardless of medical justification. The competitive effect of supraphysiological testosterone is the same as the anabolic steroid abuse of pro cycling's worst era — increased lean mass, faster recovery, improved oxygen-carrying capacity, more aggressive training tolerance. The legitimacy of the prescription does not change the effect.
Pattern two — TUE-free use. TRT used in racing without a Therapeutic Use Exemption from the relevant anti-doping body. Even at physiological doses, TRT requires a TUE for competition. Many masters riders rationalise their use as private medical care, not realising or caring that it constitutes doping under WADA rules.
Pattern three — clinic-issued prescriptions on minimal medical basis. A growing number of clinics — particularly in the U.S. — will issue TRT prescriptions on the basis of a single low-end test reading and a generic symptom checklist. The medical justification is thin and the dosing is often supraphysiological. The competitive cyclists in this group typically do not view themselves as dopers. The competitive effect on race results is not changed by their self-identification.
The IOC, USADA, and UK Anti-Doping all classify TRT as a banned substance in competition unless covered by a TUE with documented medical need. This is not a controversial position. It is anti-doping policy.
What Clubs And Organisers Can Actually Do
The structural defence against masters doping is not at the rider level alone. The most effective interventions sit with clubs and event organisers.
Event-level testing. The single most consequential intervention is unannounced testing at a small number of races per season. The cost is non-trivial — tests run to several hundred USD per sample at the lab end, plus collection costs — but the deterrent effect is significant. Riders who suspect tests might be present at any race calculate the risk differently. The pattern of mid-race withdrawals when testers arrive is itself the deterrent.
Whereabouts and registered testing pools for top finishers. A small number of national federations are now running registered testing pools for top masters age-group results. Riders who finish on the podium of national-level events become eligible for out-of-competition testing across the year. The administrative load is significant, but the effect on the very top of masters racing is substantial.
Club-level cultural commitment. The most informal but possibly most important defence is cultural. Clubs that talk about clean sport openly, refuse to ride with riders they believe are doping, and prioritise clean racing in their event scheduling produce a different competitive environment than clubs that treat the topic as taboo. Cultural pressure does not eliminate the problem. It does shift the cost calculation for would-be cheats.
Rider-level openness. The conversation Anthony has on the podcast is the version every clean masters racer should be willing to have at their local club. Silence about visible patterns protects the offenders. Talking about it — the rider who never seemed strong but is suddenly dropping the field on climbs they used to lose, the rider whose physique changed dramatically over a winter, the rider whose results profile does not match their training visibility — does not constitute a public accusation. It constitutes a culture where doping has somewhere to be addressed.
For more on the broader culture issues in cycling, see the British Cycling toxic culture piece and the Trek-LeMond doping dispute companion piece.
What Clean Masters Riders Should Take Away
Three things from the episode translate directly to the clean racer in their 30s, 40s, or 50s.
One. The problem is real and you are likely racing against it. The honest mental frame is not "doping happens in pro cycling" — it is "doping happens at the front of my local race series at some unknown rate, and I need to make my own training and racing decisions accordingly". This does not mean assuming every fast rider is doping. It means accepting that some are.
Two. Your competitive frame should be against your own ceiling. The masters racer whose self-worth depends on beating doped competitors is in an impossible position. The clean rider whose target is their own personal best, their own age-group field of clean riders, and their own structural fitness across the years is in a sustainable position. Detach from the result frame where you cannot control the inputs. Attach to the input frame where you can.
Three. Talk about it. The structural defence requires riders to be willing to name the pattern. Anthony's episode is the model. Open conversation about what is happening at masters start lines does not destabilise the sport. It is what allows the sport to exist at the masters level at all.
For amateurs working through their own training and competitive frame for masters racing, the Roadman coaching system is built around clean, evidence-based progress for serious masters cyclists. For a faster answer on a specific question, ask the AI coach.
Listen To The Full Episode
The full episode — including the deeper case studies, the discussion of why amateur testing is so limited, and the specific recommendations Anthony makes for clubs and organisers — is on the Roadman Cycling Podcast.
The doping problem in masters cycling is not pro-cycling's problem. It is amateur cycling's problem. The clean racers who care about the integrity of the sport at the level they actually race at are the ones who have to push back. The cost of staying silent is the loss of the sport at the level it most matters.
Race clean. Talk openly. Vote with your entries.
