Communityinterview

WORLD CHAMP'S UNTOLD STORY OF HIDDEN EPO USE | GENEVIÈVE JEANSON

with Geneviève Jeanson

55:40·31 August 2023

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GENEVIÈVE JEANSON

Geneviève Jeanson was the most successful junior road cyclist in the world in 1999 — UCI World Champion in both road race and time trial — before being driven into EPO use by an abusive coach starting at age 16. Her decision in adulthood to come forward, name the coach, and tell the full story of how doping starts (with body-shaming and isolation, not syringes) reframed how cycling and Olympic sport understand junior welfare. Her return to gravel racing in her 40s as a recovery project — not a results project — is a model worth holding on to in a sport that still struggles with what to do with riders after the doping label.

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KEY TAKEAWAYS

Coercion and doping in junior cycling rarely begin with a syringe — they begin with body-shaming and isolation. Jeanson's story started at 13 with her coach pinching her tricep and demanding she lose 30 pounds, with EPO not introduced until 16.
Warning signs were visible to those around her — friends and family later said they "saw something" but had no resources or framework to intervene. Watch for behavioural change, not just Podium results.
Specialising too young leaves athletes without life tools. Jeanson finished high school at 16, went straight to professional cycling, and at retirement felt "25 starting at 16 again" — a structural risk every junior programme should plan for.
The paranoia of doping is its own punishment — Jeanson describes studying parked cars on her street, refusing to share apartments at training camps, and waking to every knock on the door.
Healing took 15+ years of therapy and a decision at 40 to return to gravel racing not for results but to "rewrite the ending" of her sports story — a model of recovery worth highlighting.

Geneviève Jeanson was a Canadian World Champion cyclist in 1999, but her story is one of extraordinary resilience amid abuse. At just 13 years old, she was subjected to physical, emotional, and sexual abuse by her coach—and later coerced into taking EPO to treat anemia when she was only 16. This is a deeply personal account of how isolation, manipulation, and the pressure to succeed created a perfect storm that trapped a young athlete with no way out.

Key Takeaways

Early warning signs of abuse in sport are often missed because we conflate athletic success with athlete wellbeing—a podium finish and a smile don't mean everything is fine at home
Isolation is a critical tool abusers use: when athletes are separated from peers and support networks, they have no reference point for what's normal and no one to notice the warning signs
Doping in this context wasn't a performance choice—it was coercion born from financial manipulation, threats of suicide, and the coach's financial dependence on the athlete's results
The paranoia and psychological toll of doping rivals that of any criminal activity; athletes live in constant fear of testing and become estranged from the very community that defines them
Parents and sports administrators often unknowingly enable abuse by looking the other way when an athlete is winning, and by lacking clear reporting mechanisms and resources for witnesses
Recovery from abuse takes time—Geneviève spent 15 years in therapy and only came forward publicly in 2021, highlighting how shame and fear silence victims for decades

Expert Quotes

"Elite sport is unhealthy in my opinion...there is a line with tough love and your coach well and truly crossed that line from a physical abuse sense, an emotional abuse sense, and then later as a sexual abuse sense."

"I was trapped in a golden cage prison and I did not understand how to get out of it."

"I was less ashamed of people thinking of me as an athlete that failed a drug test than a person that lived through sexual abuse."

CLAIMS FROM THIS EPISODE

Each tagged with the strength of evidence behind it.

EXPERT
Geneviève Jeanson won the UCI Road Race and Time Trial Junior World Championships in 1999.
Source: Geneviève Jeanson, biographical detail confirmed in the Roadman Cycling Podcast interview
ANECDOTE
Jeanson was first introduced to her coach André Aubut at age 13 in a bike shop in Lachine, where his opening interaction was to pinch her tricep and tell her she had 30 pounds to lose to be competitive.
Source: Geneviève Jeanson, recounted on the Roadman Cycling Podcast
ANECDOTE
Aubut began administering EPO injections to Jeanson at age 16 in spring 1998, initially under the framing of treating anaemia, immediately before her breakthrough world title season.
Source: Geneviève Jeanson, recounted on the Roadman Cycling Podcast
ANECDOTE
Aubut moved with the 16-year-old Jeanson to Arizona to train year-round, removing her from her support network in Quebec and from independent oversight by her parents and federation.
Source: Geneviève Jeanson, recounted on the Roadman Cycling Podcast
ANECDOTE
Jeanson returned to formal education at 30, eventually going to university, after roughly five years of being "very lost" following retirement — illustrating the post-career deficit faced by athletes who specialise from early teens.
Source: Geneviève Jeanson, recounted on the Roadman Cycling Podcast

KEY QUOTES

“I was 30 with 17 year olds you know doing chemistry and biology and physics and all that stuff and then to University so I did that and then working in different fields and now I'm sitting here at 41 and I'm like I reflect and I yeah it's a movie.”
Geneviève Jeanson — Former World Road and Time Trial Champion (1999)

“He told me he was in love with me and mind you he's 41 I'm 15. uh if I would leave him he would commit suicide and or if I would leave him he would find me kill me and then himself commit suicide.”
Geneviève Jeanson — Former World Road and Time Trial Champion (1999)

“I knew going into the doctor's office that that wasn't right but what was going on in my life I was doing everything to be beat as least as possible and not to be in a bad situation where I would suffer mentally emotionally and physically um so I kind of had no choice so that's when EPO started.”
Geneviève Jeanson — Former World Road and Time Trial Champion (1999)

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT5 SECTIONS

From World Champion to Starting Over

Being very lost um I decided that to go back to school so I was 30 with 17 year olds you know doing chemistry and biology and physics and all that stuff and then to University so I did that and then working in different fields and now I'm sitting here at 41 and I'm like I reflect and I yeah it's a movie there is a lion with tough love and your coach well and truly crossed that line from a physical abuse sense and emotional abuse sense and then later as a sexual abuse sense this is quite a toxic relationship was it was extremely difficult because I felt the first thing he did was like pinch my tricep and I'm 13 and he said well if you want to be good you have about 30 pounds to lose and I remember thinking at that moment you I'm gonna show you I'm gonna show you hi everybody welcome back to the channel if you're new here my name is Anthony I'm a former lawyer turn cyclist turn podcast host based in Ireland my goal with this channel is to introduce you to the people and three ideas to help you optimize your health your happiness and your longevity former world champion Genevieve Janssen joins me today I've never recorded an interview or had a conversation like this one I want to start this show by thanking Genevieve for her bravery in tackling the issue she speaks about so eloquently today it's my sincere hope that this video is shared around as a wake-up call to athletes coaches and parents to watch out for the warning signs for either mental or physical abuse in sport Genevieve is a former professional cyclist from Canada she was the world Road and time trial Champion back in 1999. this is a heartbreaking story of Triumph doping assault and sexual abuse before we start I have a small favor to ask at the moment around 90 of people watching the channel haven't subscribed if you're getting value from these videos please think about subscribing as the bigger the channel gets the bigger the guests are gonna get you can also support the channel by supporting our amazing sponsors which are listed in the description below now enjoy this incredible conversation with Genevieve Johnson Genevieve welcome to the robot cycling podcast hey thank you so much it's so fun to be here I sometimes look at my life and I've had these many different chapters in my life whereas a football player then as well as an academic moving through law school and then into cycling sometimes I'm sitting on the couch and I'm kind of you know writing some stuff in my diary I look back and it's like watching a movie it doesn't actually feel like that stuff happened to me that I'm like that's a weird experience like how did that happen to me and I have this like disassociation from it I'm sure there's like a psychologist listening going like oh yeah you need therapy for that but do you ever have that experience where you're looking back at experiences you've been through and thinking was that real was that me absolutely a hundred percent like you I think I've lived through some stuff that uh it's basically a sequence of events that I have no idea how I got into it how I survived it how I got out of it and where I am now in my life so it's a collection of different experiences some are super horrible some are good um I went back to school I was 30 because in Quebec we have this high school that you finish at 16 and then you have those two years where you're not at University yet but you have that transition school and I never did that so I finished school at 16 went straight into you know Pro cycling and when my career ended and after like maybe five years of being very lost um I decided that to go back to school so I was 30 with 17 year olds you know doing chemistry and biology and physics and all that stuff and then to University so I did that and then working in different fields and now I'm sitting here at 41 and I'm like I reflect and I yeah it's a movie Just Like You I have a friend who's an ex-professional cyclist around he went back to get his accountancy degree and he's probably early 30s as well when he went back to school and he's surrounded by 18 year olds and 19 year olds and he said they'd be like in class going oh did you do the coursework last night and they'd be kind of laughing because they didn't have the course worked on he's like yeah like of course I do on the coursework why would I not do a coursework well that's what I'm here for there's such a difference of mature students exactly it was the same experience for me and you know being almost 15 years out of your brain is kind of so to get back into the flow of things and that you know to to ignite back your critical thinking and all the methodology to go to school I had to do my homework so I was basically working as much as I could to pay for everything and then the rest was in my books I didn't do any sports any anything else I really wanted to get that degree cycling's a bubble for most people who have quite uh I'll call it a traditional journey to recycling and listeners will kind of understand what I mean by that when we get into your story it's a very non-traditional patreon cycling but cycling is a bubble for the very best of us who have good experiences coming through and it's difficult to emerge out the far side of that I can only imagine how difficult that transition was with your non-traditional patro cycling it was um it was extremely difficult because I felt uh and probably like like most athletes that had a good experience when you get out of the sport when you decide to retire you don't have any real tools for life um most of the time you don't have a higher education so your only paths are to stay in the sport either coaching or managing or you know working for sponsors but when you want to change your life when you want to create an identity out of the sport I did not find that I had any tools for real life I felt like I was 25 and I was starting at 16 again you know to learn what I want what I don't want what I'm good at um I felt almost non-intelligent because my intellectual capacity was not like super stimulated when I was an athlete because I was always tired you know you race you train you eat you watch TV and you go to bed and then when the cycling starts to go bad and you have a bad day or a bad week or you're tired you don't have anything else to keep your self-esteem you know fed with something else that is gonna remind you that you're a good person and you have value in the world so I had I had a lot of tough years after my career at what age did you start taking cycling seriously you know I know a lot of us rolled to school and stuff on bikes when we were children but separating that part where it's like cycling for performance when did that start for you when I sat down with my coach at the time and said you know I would like to go for it I would like to go to the Canadian championships and the world the World Championships uh I didn't know before at 14 I had a boyfriend that was on a national team and he said you know Jen there are some world championships for junior women and I had no idea and when I I knew that it's something that interested me but since a young age maybe five or six uh I knew that I wanted to go to the Olympic Games I didn't know on what sport or how but uh it was always um a dream of mine so when I was 14 I would say that's where I decided that I would focus on training your coach is an important figure in your story when you reference your coach there is that the same coach that was Witcher through the troubled years it's probably pronounce this wrong because my French is terrible despite a year racing in France Andre Ubud yeah you got it yes it's the same person so how are you introduced to Andre um actually it was about 13 it was spring it is something a shop that we had in my little town where I grew up in Lachine on the island of Montreal and he served me he was a phys ed teacher but he had that side job at the bike shop during the summer and the weekends so he helped me with my bike and we started talking that I was doing races and everything and I remember the first thing he did was like pinch my tricep and I'm 13 and he said well if you want to be good you have about 30 pounds to lose and I remember thinking at that moment you [ __ ] I'm gonna show you I'm gonna show you and after that uh the the coach I had before him found a real job so he couldn't really take care of the cycling team and I knew he was a coach so my dad and I went to see him and said hey you know my daughter needs a program to to train for a season and he said yeah absolutely I'm Gonna Give You intervals and I'm gonna give you a little program so I started right away like that with that first bad experience when I think about it now I'm like even the first encounter with that guy was not good yeah but it's also you know I think you need to be easy on yourself and show yourself from love because there's the cultural context of cycling back then like my first experience going out to my French team I met my director and he lifted up my t-shirt and he pinched like my love handle and he's like you're four kilograms to lose and I was like seven percent body fast and he's like you're four kilograms to lose and that was I didn't think that as odds back then just because I was in such a [ __ ] up environment you know being well there's a quote being well adapted to a sick environment isn't a measure of health and I guess that's what we were just well adapted to this sick environment that you're so used to friends having similar experiences that a 13 year old girl someone putting hands on a 13 year old girl even is crazy now but to put hands on a 13 year old girl and say you're too fat it's just so unacceptable now but it wasn't then no exactly it was normal uh you know body weight ratio and cycling is still very important and even now when I look at the athletes especially and it's not just about women you know men too my God it's it's they're thin um Pro Sport in society when we look at it from the outside in we think it's like it's super glamorous and we're traveling all the time and we have this great life and you were going to races and we can win or you know do a top 10 and stuff but from the inside out it's uh Elite Sports is unhealthy in my opinion so like coaches uh for a long time you know we've glamorized this idea of tough law of true coaches and we've kind of serialized the true movies where we've Rockies trainers giving them the tough love but there is a lion with tough love and your coach well and truly crossed that line from a physical abuse sense an emotional abuse sense and then later as a sexual abuse sense what was the first kind of Telltale sign that you had that this is quite a toxic relationship well it was quite Insidious at the start because he started with uh when I was 14.

Abuse Disguised as Toughness

Uh with emotional and verbal abuse but it was always in the context of that's gonna make you tougher you know because when you're gonna be on a start line if you want to go to the World Championships you are gonna be intimidated you know there's girls that are gonna tell you stuff they're gonna try to make you cry they're gonna push you um and I kind of believed it because at 14 I didn't have any other images or any other Role Models uh because I was training most of the time with him and then you know it's during the summer when I was doing the races with the with the the girls of my team we didn't really talk about that and then uh one day I was doing I don't know it was winter time and I was doing a super hard training we had this super long staircase on uh so there's a World Cup ferment about another world cup but there's a UCI race for men in Montreal and they go up that mountain well on the other side there's a staircase so I would go hill repeats you know running up and down that maybe 90 second staircase and I had a bad day and at some point he hit me in the head uh and I was crying and he broke my sunglasses and everything and he said you know what that's gonna make you tough and if you if you're able to sustain my physical abuse uh and not cry and you know just take the hits It's Gonna Make You a great cyclist and it's stupid to say now but I was like maybe because in a racing environment it's like the jungle and you know you're gonna be faced by all sorts of physical pain and I kind of in my 14 year old head wrap that around saying yes he's right and you know he's my coach he's supposed to take care of me uh and do stuff that's good for me so it started there but after that it went downhill pretty fast uh because I was good I was already winning and when I was 15 I won the national championships in the Juniors so against girls two years yeah yeah two years older than me um and that's when you know sexual abuse started and he told me he was in love with me and mind you he's 41 I'm 15. uh if I would leave him he would commit suicide and or if I would leave him he would find me kill me and then himself commit suicide didn't care uh so it started kind of there and I didn't want to have the suicide of someone on my shoulders and at the time you know there was no me too movement uh we were taught as women that if you get raped it's probably your fault so I couldn't tell that to anybody so I live with that and I didn't want him to kill himself so I just continue but at the same time I had that dream you know I wanted to be a good cyclist and I remember thinking at that time I'm gonna deal with the consequences later you know I've I'm just gonna move forward and it's gonna go away but it never does so is there a sense and I know this is going to sound crazy for probably anyone apart from you is there a sense that at the time it's like the end almost justifies the means I'm winning races I'm progressing I have this dream and I'm moving towards this dream so if there's side effects you know what I'll deal with those side effects because I'm going the direction I want to go you're absolutely right uh that's what I was thinking at the time and you know people were proud of me my family was proud my friends were proud I I was like she said moving forward and that goal of the World Championships just a participation to World Championships was getting closer and I I loved my sport I love training and since I was so isolated again I didn't know if it was normal if it happened to other girls it was just like the way to go in sport as a woman was that I had no idea um so yeah I just said okay I'm just gonna keep my eyes on the prize and everything else around we'll see later an ID isolation piece is important to this because I came up training with you know four or five quite close friends and we'd meet every single day for training and I couldn't have bought a new pair of socks without the guys all known about us you know everyone oh new socks where did you get the new socks so they were intimately involved in every aspect of your life but if you don't have those close training Partners there's nobody to notice those days when you're coming in either physically or mentally bruised you're absolutely right and you know in Quebec in the the late 90s and early 2000s women's cycling was extremely small uh there was maybe five good women and when I was 16 I moved to Arizona with him to Train full time you know when I graduated high school and back then in Arizona I mean I hardly spoke English uh we didn't know anybody so no one no one knew my parents didn't really see what was going on because when I was coming back home you know for a few weeks a year I was putting on my best face because I didn't want them to you know uh be worried or to get me out of my sport that I loved so much so yes I didn't have that support where people could see me from day to day people saw me like months at with with months in between so you moved us 16 years old away which you're 40 plus year old coach yeah well how did it happen I guess um when I was when I turned 16 and I had one you know Canadian championships and everything as a 15 year old against Juniors he decided to quit his job to take care of me a hundred percent full-time so and he needs now money so at 16 and that's where the EPO came in so he needs money to pay his bills uh constantly threatening me that you know if you leave me I'm gonna commit suicide and now I mean you're in charge of my Financial Health uh because I'm gonna lose my job and if you look around there's no other little girls that have a coach that that's as dedicated as I am towards you that's why they're not good and he was kind of right right the other girls had Club coaches and I was beating them so I was like yeah he's probably right and again I'm scared of being beat him commit suicide so at 16 we discovered that I was anemic so the only way to treat anemiah is with rest and you know Iron shots and he told me well Jen we can't wait that long because now the summer is just starting that wasn't in the spring of 1998.

The First EPO Injection

Uh the summer is just starting and I don't have any salary coming in we absolutely need you to perform and to get sponsors so I'm gonna bring you to this doctor and you're gonna take EPO because you know my financial situation is on the line and and I I knew going into the doctor's office that that wasn't right but what was going on in my life I was doing everything to be beat as least as possible and not to be in a bad situation where I would suffer mentally emotionally and physically um so I kind of had no choice so that's when DPO started and at first it was just to treat my anemia so a few injections and that's it but of course it was not like that so when I started that it coincided with well now we need to train all year long because next year we're going to be junior and you're going to be able to go to the world championships and you know we have to keep those performances coming in so since in Quebec I mean we have eight months of winter and four months of shitty weather uh we moved to Arizona so I could train all year I think before I before I jump into the EPO I think the contexts to your mental health for one for better term at that point when you take EPO is important so you're in Arizona you're living with the coach full-time the relationship is still physically abusive if you're not hitting times on intervals it's mentally abusive and manipulative but is there an ongoing inappropriate sexual relationship as well because you're still below the age of consent yeah absolutely uh it's uh it's ongoing and it's I I don't really have a choice either because I just can't refuse you know and are you living with him I am yeah full time so you're being subjected to these sexual attacks on a daily or weekly basis yeah maybe not daily but definitely was part of uh of the relationship and it that was the toughest part to admit I thought I would I would die with this secret um it's only in 2021 that I decided to open up on that because it's still happening in cycling it's still happening in sport and it has to stop and I I'm fortunate enough now to have a super healthy life um you know I did 15 years of therapy to understand everything and I want people or I want women and men because it happens to men too as we see it in hockey here in in Canada um that it's possible to heal from that and to have a positive life after so um I decided to go forward and go past my super shame and in Comfort to to share and and help these people as well so yes it's a long answer to your question but I'm living with him and all the violence is happening that's That's Heavy that's hard to process in his warped mind is he in some sort of consensual relationship with you even though you're not capable of consent still at this age I have no idea sometimes I'm asking myself like why was I chosen as this little girl to live through all that and you know experience all that bad stuff and I and I wonder also what was going on in his head during all these years um but anyway how can a 41 year old can be attracted by a 15 year old this that's crazy but is that it's answers that I'll never have so even if I could come up with all those thousand different scenarios in my head it's not gonna get me further ahead in my in my personal growth so I've decided to to put that aside who put these questions aside because I'll never know and I'll never forgive him and I'll never talk to him again I am not interested in knowing but yeah it's pretty it's pretty [ __ ] has he has he tried to make contact no no the last thing I heard from him he's still living in the in the US and he got arrested by the police for domestic violence uh so that's that's the the last thing I heard from from him and I learned in the newspaper did you ever consider pressing criminal charges I'm considering it more now and I I won't and the reason is back then uh first I I never thought I would admit to everything none of the violence none of the sexual abuse to me it was less I was less ashamed of people thinking of me as an athlete that failed a drug test then a person I did not want to be associated with a person that lived through sexual abuse so I was totally fine about leaving it to only performance enhancing drugs uh so I never thought I would press charges because it would bring the story up to reality but after that I decided that I only had energy enough energy to better my life as a person so all my resources all my intellectual uh or all my my spirit energy I wanted to put it into healing and make myself a better human and really not live with all that baggage that's not mine so I poured myself into into therapy um and now when I think of it it would take me so much energy to bring that all back up and you know to press charges where criminal civil for what you know he's going to go to jail for what like one month uh so I'm I'm not sure I'm gonna do it I I'd like to believe that life is going to take care of him uh but sometimes when I get really angry about you know abuse stories and sport of course I I think about it and that's why when we move on to this next chapter of doping that it's it's a difficult pill to swallow I've talked to plenty of athletes on the podcast and they've doped and they regret the decision and they had various motivations for it but this is so connected to the physical mental emotional and sexual torture that you were put through because now it's almost diffic it becomes difficult for you to come forward as a 17 18 year old and talk about any abuse you suffered because the abuse is so linked now to your EPO usage which ends your cycling career which is all you care about at that point in your life yeah you're absolutely right I could not go to my Federation uh because the the doping would have come up and with doping I would have been suspended and at that time I mean I have a team I have a cycling team I am I'm employing girls that are making a good salary so they have a little job they can live their dream also to be professional cyclists I have sponsors and obligation to those sponsors I can't really get another coach because he's gonna kill me if I leave or he's gonna commit suicide and then with another coach uh you know if I don't take the EPO my what are going to be my performances maybe they're gonna you know go down I have no idea of course they would but I have no idea um I couldn't go to the anti-doping agencies because the only thing they would see is is the performance enhancing drug use and I would get banned so I was kind of I would I was trapped I was in in that prison that was a golden cage prison and I did not did not understand how to get out of it so take me back the year is 1998.

Crossing the Doping Line

It's the year before you become the double world Champion Road and time trial in 99 you're diagnosed with anemia your coach has gone all in so he needs you to make cash and you've come or your coach has come to this solution that the treatment for your anemia is EPO did you have an awareness what EPO was at the time I did because of the the Fest sounds super cliche but everybody that knew about the doping which was not very many people were like ah everybody is doing it and they have no test for it I knew it was bad um I didn't like it I felt like I was going into that rabbit hole that was even more and more you know narrow I was getting into trouble that I could not really deal with I didn't know how to deal with what do you mean by trouble it's a secret that you can't share with anybody you're eating and and you're you're actually you're a criminal in the world you live in because if you take regular Society if you do something illegal you're a criminal so if I'm living in the World of Sport and I'm taking EPO which is banned I'm a criminal so now I'm in the criminal in in the place I live in I'm being abused and I have kind of no way out so and all that at 16 year old um but yeah I knew I knew it was not yeah I I knew it this is the moment the EPO went into your arms was Dash when I look at your story there's there's so many Crossroads and when people think about Crossroads they're often think there's a conscious choice at these Crossroads but so many of your Crossroads and not to excuse somebody's you know crossing the line because some of these things there is no excuse for but there is circumstances and justifications for it that make one person's decisions different to another and you definitely were working through an extraordinary set of circumstances that I've never heard a comparable story to this before that moment when EPO first went into your veins it does feel like another Crossroads like oh there's a line definitely crossed here it's like I went to the end that I was getting to a point in sport that I never thought I would be and that was not interesting to me uh you know sports for me was always getting the best of my body and you know trying uh trying to have fun doing it um so it felt it felt very dark very dark and very lonely Today's Show is sponsored by the Breakaway a few years ago I saw a huge gap in the market for an app that was like a cycling coach in your pocket I knew AI was ultimately going to be the best coach in the world I spent about two years of my life trying to build this but unfortunately it didn't happen ever since then I've kept a really close eye on the AI space to see if anyone else could succeed where I failed the Breakaway app caught my attention a couple of months back because Christian vanderveld yep the same Christian van velt who got fought in Detroit of France is one of the co-founders for the Breakaway and it seems that at the Breakaway they've created the ultimate cycling training companion and they're bringing low-cost coaching to the masses you'll know from listening to my podcast that my pet peeve is when cyclists head out the door with no plan no goal and just roll around with no objective please don't be that guy I implore you the Breakaway app looks at all your historic training data and it builds training plans around your strengths on weaknesses so you always have the perfect training session they also have Integrations which I'm really excited about whoop and Aura ring the reason I previously ditched my wearables was because the data didn't really inform my training well now it does you can head on over to Rodman trial.com and you can get a free 30-day trial for the app the link for this is in the description down below anyone I've talked to on the podcast who's crossed that line they said there's there's a couple of elements to it but one of the most difficult ones to deal with was the extreme paranoia that accompanied it knowing that you've crossed the line and it's like looking around and going like I'm gonna get caught there's testers coming I'm gonna get caught and if people have recalled stories of like Army crawling on the ground on their own apartment because there's a knock on the front door did you have comparable experiences so much I was so paranoid Anthony I was studying the cars and the streets I was in just to make sure that I knew each car so if I saw a car that was not there usually I didn't want to go in I didn't want to go into my front door because you know it could be it could be a tester but then it gets you also paranoid with your friends and your teammates you know you I I was always I I could never live with uh you know in training camps and stuff I could never be in the same apartment as my my teammates because those stupid products were there so I was always stuck with my coach in a different apartment with him without any contacts with the girls except uh you know when we were riding our bikes together so all these experiences before the ride and after the ride and having fun with the girls I didn't but then you think okay do they see it do they know that you know if they come to my house and for dinner or gonna see something different or gonna are are they gonna look around um and then when you travel I mean you're in a new place you have no idea who can show up you hear a knock on the door at night I mean even if it's your friend you don't want to go answer your door you know you're peeking through the blinds to see it's crazy it becomes so encompassing I mean I was never an addict of recreational drugs but I read many books of a heroin addict and one is uh Keith Richards biography and he talks about where he was going on tour and always looking for heroin and how you would get it because you couldn't travel with it and that's the only thing he was thinking about how am I going to get the drug well for me it was not that but it you know you think 24 hour a day even when you sleep and you hear a noise you're like is it that like a tester that's coming to my door that's the only thing you think about and you you miss so much stuff in your life just because you're focused on that it's it's not worth it but it's crazy because you're you're safe space is cycling it's the one thing where you fit in where you know the ethic if you know what to wear you're the cool kid in cycling and now with a simple injection you've ostracized yourself from the only community that you feel connection to yeah absolutely so um you're still part of the community but it's on the surface you don't really feel like you belong to that community and the the thoughts and the emotions and the paranoia you're experiencing they remind me so much I've had some I love the story of rebirth like no one really likes the story of the person who was good got better got better got better was clean caught all the way up and then won everything and then retired happy it's not a very interesting story arc it's normally like God huge setback overcame the setback to have Victory and I've had some amazing people on the podcast where yeah my friends who are involved they've been on the podcast who've been involved in criminality for a period they describe similar feelings and emotions to you that in the middle of the night they'll hear a noise on the roof and they'll think someone's coming to kill me so it's crazy that an injection which on the grand scheme of things from killing people to Armed robberies it's quite trivial but it elicits all the same paranoia and emotions simply by virtue of the fact that you've stepped across that line and there will have become a criminal yeah I mean you know sport is a reflection of society so you find all the same feelings all the same emotions all the same reactions in sport that you can see uh in society or that like you said criminals can live through when they do stuff in regular life not Sporting Life um and it's something that I wish the doping agencies would talk more about I mean they're all about testing and anti-doping and and you know doing a lot of education on what the athletes have to look for as far as what they consume and and you know the different products and the medications and the tuys but there's not really former athletes that fail the drug test that work for these agencies and I believe that it would be like super pertinent to have like people like me that live through all this uh doing also Outreach and education for the anti-doping agencies because we know what's the other side but I think unfortunately still now uh we're viewed as Outsiders and bad people and dopers um so I hope that's gonna change in the future I think I don't ever think that somebody is the worst decision they've ever made like if you happen to be caught for one of the worst decisions you ever made I don't think that makes you a bad person I think if most of us myself included search our souls for the worst thing we've ever done if somebody took that act they blew it up for the media to play out in all its unsightly glory and everyone that didn't know us judged us off that one data point I don't think any of us will come out looking very good from that yeah you're right we all have our different stuff there's always a period in our life where we kind of messed up but you know for me my worst decision was not taking EPO because it was it was not my decision I believe my worst worst moment and my worst decision was allowing my former coach to do all these things he did to me because I had this intuition inside you know I had this voice inside telling me Jen you can't live like this it's not normal even if you don't see around if you other girls are living the same thing it is not normal I knew it inside and I did not listen to that voice that's but Jen how do you get out like who failed her who [ __ ] this up like where's the checks and balances that fails how do you stop Genevieve going through this again how do you stop the Next Generation I want the same face yeah it's an excellent question I think that athletes and people that live the similar situation as I did it's our duty to talk about it and to make it known and so athletes that are gonna be in that same situation if they hear my story and if there's a girl that you know she's 15 17 and 20.

Breaking the Silence in Sport

She can be or he can be any age if he or she know what happened to me and listens and knows that that's not normal and sees the same Flags the same patterns um that athlete might say I heard Jen talking about it that's probably not right I have doubts so I'm gonna pick up the phone and I'm gonna call uh you know we have this non-profit organization in Quebec called sportide which it's a 24 hours seven days a week line that athletes and the the the whole of the sports system in Quebec can call and say you know I'm I've I've been a witness of violence I've been a witness of this this is happening to me is that normal is there something I can do and they're going to be guided in their decision so yeah I I think it's it's our duty to to be able to share but you know it's a process it's all an individual process it took me more than 15 years to be able to talk about all that stuff so for some people it might be longer for some people it might be shorter um but I I'm hoping that you know those those Pro women that is a little bit like Andrea Garcia and Michael Phelps did with their mental health they came forward and they they talked about what they lived it it kind of make it more it makes it more normal to feel that way and athletes can can go to resources to help them a little faster if they if they see that such winning athletes have been through that does that make any sense yeah and I think what you're doing is so important and there's so many people listening to the podcast maybe they're you know son or daughters involved in team sports whether it's hockey or football or whatever it is like it's it's to you know we're all so busy and we're all balancing a hundred things but it's just to be on the lookout for these early signs because I think without the earliest like if the physical violence is nipped in the board early in your story I'm not sure if it ever progresses to the scale that it did so it's so many people could be on the lookout for us because there's no level of physical or mental abuse from a coach which is quote unquote acceptable absolutely and there there's two things with what you just said one when I when I came back to Canada in 2012 and I started talking about with people uh more and more that knew me they knew they knew something was going on and they almost all told me 90 of the people that I talked with and even more when I came out with with my my view story in 2021 they all said we saw something we saw you were not right we saw the violence in him we saw the difference between when you were by yourself and you when you were with him but we didn't know what to do we didn't have any resources we didn't have anybody we could go and call um I was unaccessible because the coach was you know filtering all my contacts and all my emails and everything else so they didn't do anything and then secondly I think parents and the the the sports Community we make the mistake of seeing a smile and a Podium and we equate that immediately to well everything is going well you know she's winning or he's winning or she has a smile on her face so everything must be super well in The Athlete's life and it's not always true so it's important to be on the lookout and it's important that when we are witness or when we feel or when we see that our friend or our kid or our brother or sister anything we see the change we need to address it we need to stop looking the other way because the athlete has success there's so many tragic aspects to this story but for me as an athlete the question I always tried to answer through my athletic career and I think I largely answered it was like how good can I be and I hit my ceiling I got to a point where I'm like okay I'm not gonna make World Tour I've I've caught all the weight I've made all the sacrifices I've based myself abroad I've optimized my training as much as I'm able to do financially and mentally this is my level and I'll never look at the world tour guys now in the Tour de France and think oh maybe that could be me no interest in it like I've seen what it takes to be the one percent of the one percent it's not for me I can't breathe that rare air that they breed he the coach didn't just rob you of your Youth and your innocence he robbed you of an answer to that question how good can I be yep and it's um it's a question that I ask myself a lot these days because uh like I said earlier I um I told you I'm not sure I I said it recording but I decided to go back to racing in 2021 when I turned 40 because the only Power that my coach has on me still is he robbed me of having fun in races having fun with friends um trying my best and getting dropped uh the relationship between pain and not finishing an interval set and being super proud of yourself because you gave it your all it was never good enough and that doesn't belong to me you know that belongs to him and it's his cassette tape that plays in my brain so I decided at 40 I'm gonna rewire my brain and I want to make I want to write the ending of my sports story um so I decided to go back and and do gravel racing and I'm I'm really struggling with all the the the past emotions and and the past intellectual reflexes and everything um but it's a it's a path that I'm on right now and it's extremely enriching for me as a as a human being um I think I forgot the the beginning of the question I got cut into my my explanation I think it's you're the next chapter of your life is oh yeah that's right you're rewriting that story yes and uh I never know how good I'm gonna be and every time you know I'm I'm training and I'm doing my my stuff here which it you know sometimes it's a it's a super long bike ride or sometimes it's going to be hard intervals and and I'm thinking now I'm I'm 41 uh recovery is not the same I have a job I can't I cannot train 25 hours a week or you know 25 000 kilometers a year anymore and this is the shape I have uh I'm in it's been 18 months now that I'm training after drinking wine for 15 years and doing nothing so you know I'm not gonna I'm not gonna regain all that strength all at once uh so I'm going through this process but it really pisses me off I would have loved to know who I was with and actually who I was as an athlete uh back then when I was 20 and you know in sport 100 that was my life so but you know what the next chapter is an exciting one as well because it's how good can I be within this container and you're building the container for yourself the containers maybe a temporal container where it's how good can I be we're 10 hours a week where I still have the freshness to pursue a personal life a work life and it's a really fun exciting challenge because winning looks different and I think we are entering into a an era in sport where winning looks different we can't say that success is somebody that wins a gold medal in Olympics if the process of them winning the gold medal also destroys their mental health their physical health their relationships because that's not success so maybe success looks like winning in this container and I think that's the chapter you're about to embark on which is super exciting yeah it's exactly it I'm trying to be I'm trying to be good not the best I'm trying to be the best I can in many things and like my my psychologist told me a few years ago he said Jen it's better that you're 80 percent good in sport good at your job good as a friend good as a partner good as this and this and this then being a hundred percent good and only one thing you know your life is gonna be more Rich if you're good enough to have fun and be proud of yourself in all these things because human beings were not only one thing so I thought that was super interesting and yes um it's exactly the path I'm on but at the same time you know it would I would love to see a change on the global level and for people and sponsors and and organizers and team managers to understand that you know 50th is good it's not always one two and three that are good it's not always a medal or top five that are that that's good it can be good for a long time so you know is bringing that Spirit out now because we're seeing like I almost don't know who wins gravel races like and I don't almost don't care it's about the stories on the way like you get a maybe the winner matters or the podium matters but after that like you come Fifth and who came fifth in Badlands last year I haven't a clue who came first in Badlands last year but I know loads of my friends who had crazy stories and experiences in Badlands and memories that'll last them a lifetime and I think that's what winning is yeah it is it's actually building your your your your your bank of human experiences and discovering who you are who are you after 50k who are you after 200k what's going on in your head how are you gonna go through this process or this obstacle or when it's going great you know how do you feel when when you're you're you're crashing because you didn't eat enough what do you do so it's really a I like to say that I'm my own little personal science experiment and I want to put myself in as many situations as I can to figure out all these things about me for me it's fun it's a puzzle uh it's not always simple or easy but it's something I enjoy so that's what I'm looking for and that's exactly why I chose Ravel uh just more than the beer of course the the beer at the end it's the adventure and you know going through a journey not just being a three hour and a bike to to try to win a bike race so we're about off to Badlands at the end of the season so how are you feeling about figuring out this puzzle for your personal science experiment it's a bit of a conundrum to figure out I'm not entirely sure how you train for this or how you get ready for this I'm kind of winging it I have no idea because I have zero experience in in the ultra engineering Sports um I have the the the the pleasure to do it with one of my greatest friends uh Lynn Bessette who is in Canada probably the best entrance Sports women we have in the country um she has a loads of experience in uh in Ultra endurance events Adventure raids uh long running races long cycling races so we're gonna partner up for this but so far I mean we just came back from a two weeks Adventure in France because some of her friends in in Quebec are organizing a 500 kilometer uh endurance event and it's going to be their fourth year they do it in Quebec but they want to do one in in the south of France next year so we went and tested the course and of course my fitness is absolutely not at her level she is extremely fast and extremely endurant and she could ride all day without sleep I can't and I'm I'm figuring out that I'm the kind of uh of of uh of girl that I can ride hard and fast for six to eight hours but I really like coming home after and prepare a good meal for a bunch of my friends and have a glass of wine so it doesn't take away from from the the the athlete I'm developing to be as an ultra engine cyclist but uh so we had that we have a little bit of a a distance between our fitness so my goal right now until Badlands is to perfect my form to be able to be as close as I can to hers so she doesn't have to wait for me air all day every day in Badlands so yeah it's um it's a bit scary I would say but very exciting and now I have three months where I'm gonna fine-tune uh you know all the little pieces of the puzzles I can and the ones I have control over but yeah I'm kind of winning it too go back and listen to my podcast with Leo Wilcox uh it's a good few months ago but Lael talks about her preparation for uh oh she's so amazing she won the female category last year and she's just she's a rock star she's talking about like seven minute naps and then going again for another 12 hours and she is great like she went for a nap so she rode for I think like 18 hours and then she's like okay I'm tired I need I need to sleep so she pulled to the side of the road didn't take her helmet off even left her helmet and sunglasses on set her alarm clock for 45 minutes later woke up seven minutes later said she felt refreshed so rolled like another 18 hours again oh my God you're a rock star Lil you know that's gonna be unrelated but the only only apps is when I was working in restaurant industry and I was closing the place down at like 4 a.m in the morning and I was working brunch the next morning and I had to be there at seven I would keep all the little makeup I had on I didn't even change my clothes I would took my alarm and sleep like this and then would wake up and go back to work but yeah I'm not sure I would be able to do that after an 18-hour day on my bike definitely let's see Jen thanks very much your story is a super important one I know this is a podcast that's gonna get widely shared around because so many people are touched by physical mental or sexual abuse within Sports and I think the story is a wake-up call for people to pull their head up from their busy lives and watch out for those warning signs well thank you for having me Anthony and giving me that platform you know to reach out a little bit more to to those people and it doesn't have to be in sports you know you can see that in your workplace you can see that in your personal relationship or a friend and it's super important to share so it means a lot to me that you took the time to to speak with me this morning gotcha Badlands yeah we'll see you then if you enjoyed that episode press here for another chat that I know you're gonna love and don't forget to subscribe

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Did Geneviève Jeanson admit to using EPO?+

Yes. Jeanson publicly admitted to EPO use and in this podcast episode she explains that her coach André Aubut began administering the drug when she was 16 years old. She describes the doping as part of a broader pattern of coercion and abuse that began when she was 13.

Who was Geneviève Jeanson's coach and what did he do?+

Jeanson's coach was André Aubut, who began abusing her at age 13 and later introduced EPO as part of her training programme. Jeanson recounts that the abuse was physical, emotional, and sexual, and that Aubut used isolation and a winning culture to maintain control over her throughout her career.

How does doping abuse start in junior cycling?+

Jeanson's case shows how it can begin through incremental control rather than a single decision. Her coach established dominance early by targeting her body image and cutting her off from outside relationships, which meant that by the time EPO was introduced she had no framework to refuse or report it.

Why do elite cyclists struggle after retirement?+

Athletes who specialise from a very young age, as Jeanson did, often build their entire identity around sport and develop few practical skills for adult life outside it. Jeanson describes how retirement left her without the tools most people acquire through normal adolescence, making the transition particularly damaging for those who also experienced abuse during their career.

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Key Takeaways

Early warning signs of abuse in sport are often missed because we conflate athletic success with athlete wellbeing—a podium finish and a smile don't mean everything is fine at home

Isolation is a critical tool abusers use: when athletes are separated from peers and support networks, they have no reference point for what's normal and no one to notice the warning signs

Doping in this context wasn't a performance choice—it was coercion born from financial manipulation, threats of suicide, and the coach's financial dependence on the athlete's results

The paranoia and psychological toll of doping rivals that of any criminal activity; athletes live in constant fear of testing and become estranged from the very community that defines them

Parents and sports administrators often unknowingly enable abuse by looking the other way when an athlete is winning, and by lacking clear reporting mechanisms and resources for witnesses

Recovery from abuse takes time—Geneviève spent 15 years in therapy and only came forward publicly in 2021, highlighting how shame and fear silence victims for decades

Expert Quotes

"Elite sport is unhealthy in my opinion...there is a line with tough love and your coach well and truly crossed that line from a physical abuse sense, an emotional abuse sense, and then later as a sexual abuse sense."

"I was trapped in a golden cage prison and I did not understand how to get out of it."

"I was less ashamed of people thinking of me as an athlete that failed a drug test than a person that lived through sexual abuse."

KEY QUOTES

“I was 30 with 17 year olds you know doing chemistry and biology and physics and all that stuff and then to University so I did that and then working in different fields and now I'm sitting here at 41 and I'm like I reflect and I yeah it's a movie.”
Geneviève Jeanson — Former World Road and Time Trial Champion (1999)

“He told me he was in love with me and mind you he's 41 I'm 15. uh if I would leave him he would commit suicide and or if I would leave him he would find me kill me and then himself commit suicide.”
Geneviève Jeanson — Former World Road and Time Trial Champion (1999)

“I knew going into the doctor's office that that wasn't right but what was going on in my life I was doing everything to be beat as least as possible and not to be in a bad situation where I would suffer mentally emotionally and physically um so I kind of had no choice so that's when EPO started.”
Geneviève Jeanson — Former World Road and Time Trial Champion (1999)

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Did Geneviève Jeanson admit to using EPO?+

Who was Geneviève Jeanson's coach and what did he do?+

How does doping abuse start in junior cycling?+

Why do elite cyclists struggle after retirement?+

WORLD CHAMP'S UNTOLD STORY OF HIDDEN EPO USE | GENEVIÈVE JEANSON

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KEY QUOTES

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WORLD CHAMP'S UNTOLD STORY OF HIDDEN EPO USE | GENEVIÈVE JEANSON

Key Takeaways

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KEY QUOTES

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

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