Letter from Europe

Here's a short article I wrote published in the latest version of Vo2max magazine. Slightly dated, but I hope still interesting.

Kohl’s Positive Sinks Austrian Morale

As touched on in last issue’s Letter from Europe, Austria hasn’t had a great time of it in recent years. Shocking scandals involving people imprisoned in cellars, not to mention recent elections where 30% of the electorate voted for far right parties have led to international condemnation and the Austrian public wondering whether their country’s image will ever recover.

Giving the country hope that things might improve was new pin-up sports star Bernhard Kohl. The 26-year-old Viennese surprised everybody by winning the red polka dot mountains jersey at the 2008 Tour de France, claiming third place overall in the process.

His triumph followed a number of inspiring mountain-top finishes where Kohl appeared to ‘dig deep’ into his reserves, crossing the line in an exhausted state.

Kohl was suddenly a household name and a bright light in the gloom for Austria’s 8m inhabitants. His image was plastered across billboards, he was nominated for the nation’s sportsperson of the year award and he was generally praised as being a nice guy along with his athletic ability.


At the beginning of October 2008, things started to wobble. It was reported that his Gerolsteiner team- and room-mate Stefan Schumacher had tested positive for CERA, a third generation EPO substance that had already been found in samples given by other riders at July’s Tour.

Schumacher has had previous scrapes with the doping police and had put in some suspiciously good performances during the Tour. Rumours began to circulate that more positives were to be announced. Kohl took a backseat, refusing to comment in detail about his friend’s test results.

His own personal website, www.bernhardkohl.at, became a hotbed of debate with fans arguing about the possibility of their hero being exposed next.

Then on October 14 it was announced that Kohl had returned a sample that had tested positive for CERA. The obligatory surprise and denial was replaced a few days later by an admission of guilt, blaming poor form and the need to find a new team for 2009 as reasons for his indiscretion.

"I fell to temptation,“ said Kohl, with tears in his eyes to a press conference on October 15. „The pressure was incredibly strong. I'm only human and in this exceptional situation I showed weakness. "I'm only human and in this exceptional situation I showed weakness. "

Kohl has rapidly disappeared from billboards and he was deleted from the nomination list for sportsperson of the year (ski jumper Thomas Morgenstern picked up the prize instead), while German TV channels ZDF and ARD have dropped Tour de France coverage as a result of the CERA revelations.

Kohl will now likely spend two years in the wilderness, citing a possible return to competitive cycling at the Tour of Spain in 2010. If Austria’s reputation can return from the wilderness is another question entirely.