Bike Bazaar

We went way back in cycling's annals to find your answer. All the way to... 1911 -- just eight years after the Tour de France first pedalled out of the imagination of L'Auto-Velo newspaper publisher Henri Desgrange in 1903.

The following could be considered a tale of either "doping" or "poisoning." But whatever your interpretation, Eurosport's cycling historians designate Paul Duboc as the first cyclist with a documented case of riding-under-the-influence.

In 1911, Duboc was having an inspired Tour de France. Nine stages into the race, the Frenchman was playing with the peloton. A master tactician, he shadowed Tour strongman Gustave Garrigou's every move before launching a solo attack on the beyond-category grades of the Aubisque climb in the Pyrenees.

Ten minutes free of the pack, Duboc suddenly stopped. Ghost white and practically spastic, he veered to the roadside and began a vomiting fit that lasted over an hour.

Ridiculously, he then got back on his bike, finishing the stage some four hours off the back.

Foul play was suspected from the get-go, but it wasn't until 1915 that the truth was told.

Alerted by an undisclosed source, Tour de France organisers descended upon François Lafourcade, a former rider and fervent supporter of 1911 race favourite -- and eventual winner -- Gustave Garrigou.

Disgruntled with Duboc's surge through the overall standing, Lafourcade whipped up a concoction of no-one-knows-exactly-what (though some report the operative ingredient was strychnine) and slipped it to Duboc at a water stop.

Barred for life from the sport, Lafourcade's chemistry antics were nonetheless kept confidential until his death fighting on the front of World War I in 1915.

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