Olympian Hughes opens book on doping nightmare

By: Geoff Kirbyson Posted: 4:00 PM CDT Monday, Sep. 14, 2015 Last Modified: 4:15 PM CDT Tuesday, Sep. 15, 2015 | Updates

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CLARA Hughes could have cycled — or skated — off into the sunset as one of Canada’s greatest Olympians, her legacy secure with six medals in her trophy case.

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CLARA Hughes could have cycled — or skated — off into the sunset as one of Canada’s greatest Olympians, her legacy secure with six medals in her trophy case.

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CLARA Hughes could have cycled — or skated — off into the sunset as one of Canada’s greatest Olympians, her legacy secure with six medals in her trophy case.

But the virtually certain, first-ballot entrant for Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame has never been averse to taking risks. And she might have taken the biggest one of her life by admitting to a doping violation back in 1994 in her just-released memoir, Open Heart, Open Mind.

Hughes will sit down for an extended interview Tuesday afternoon at the Winnipeg Free Press News Café at 3 p.m. The event is open to the public, and Hughes will answer questions from the audience.

Copies of her book will be available for sale. Later, she’ll attend a book launch event at McNally Robinson Booksellers at Grant Park Shopping Centre, where she will speak and also sign copies of the book.

Hughes retired after the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, so it’s not like she can be suspended from competition. The court of public opinion is a fickle one though, and she risks tarnishing her sterling reputation.

The drug violation took place just after she won a six-stage race over five days in the fall of 1994 as a guest on the Saturn Cycling Team. She had high hopes she would be asked to join them full time. Then her world came crashing down.

Pierre Hutsebaut, Canada’s national team director, informed her that she had tested positive for ephedrine at the world cycling championships in Sicily.

She was devastated.

“I was also confused. I didn’t even know what ephedrine was, and couldn’t imagine how it had found its way into my system. I began checking the labels on everything I ingested, right down to my toothpaste,” she writes.

“I personally never even considered doping, because I was a successful rider in a sport where I had a chance to win without drugs, though perhaps not all the time.”

Both Hutsebaut and national team coach Denis Roux were certain Hughes hadn’t taken a banned substance. The penalty would have been a three-month ban, which would have taken place during the off-season.

Since she hadn’t won any Olympic or world championship medals that would have to be returned, she was advised to keep quiet about the whole thing. She obliged.

Until now, that is.

“Nevertheless, I felt gutted, as if I’d cheated, even though I hadn’t. I still don’t know if that was the right decision. That incident continued to eat at me throughout my career,” she writes.

But rather than linking her with the likes of cyclist Lance Armstrong or baseball player Alex Rodriguez, both of whom have been suspended for use of performance-enhancing drugs, it’s more likely that Canadians will appreciate her candour and sympathize with the difficult situation she found herself in. She comes across as a normal person with normal problems, and that will likely mitigate much of the backlash.

Many will liken Hughes’ story to that of rower Silken Laumann, who generated international headlines in 1995 when she tested positive for banned stimulant pseudoephedrine after inadvertently taking the wrong kind of cold medicine. Laumann was stripped of several medals from the world championships and Pan Am Games but cemented her legend the following year by winning a silver medal at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, just 10 weeks after a gruesome crash that almost cost her her leg.

This isn’t the first time that Hughes has bared her soul. She has been a tireless proponent of mental-illness education, sharing her own story in the process, and has even ridden across Canada to raise money and awareness for the cause. She is the national spokeswoman for Bell Canada’s Mental Health initiative and the Let’s Talk campaign.

In her book, she also talks about struggling with an eating disorder.

geoff.kirbyson@freepress.mb.ca