Track National Champion Bobby Lea Tests Positive for Banned Substance
Correction: an earlier version of this article mis-stated the number of national titles that Lea would lose as a result of the sanction; it is one, not four.
On December 17, Bobby Lea, a multi-time elite national champion and two-time Olympian, was formally served with a 16-month suspension by the United States Anti-Doping Agency. Lea tested positive for oxycodone, a narcotic, following the 2015 Elite Track National Championships, where he won titles in the points race, Madison, individual pursuit, and omnium disciplines. The 2015 national title in the points race, won on the day he tested positive, is vacated as a result of the sanction; Lea’s other results from the season stand.
Lea, 32, won a bronze medal in the scratch race at last February’s World Track Championships and has been training for a likely start spot in the Rio Olympics next summer. While he is abiding by the suspension, he announced in a letter to family and friends that he intends to appeal the suspension to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), in hopes of reducing his ban and allowing a return to competition in time for the Olympics.
In his letter, Lea said the positive test resulted from taking Percocet, the name-brand drug containing oxycodone, as a sleep aid. He has a prescription for it from his personal physician and wrote that he failed to check whether it was on the WADA banned list (it is listed as a specified substance, one banned only in competition).
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In an interview that was at times halting and clearly painful for him, Lea told Bicycling about his positive test, his plans to appeal, and how he hopes the cycling community will view his efforts to take responsibility and attempt to continue his career.
Lea has historically had a close relationship with Bicycling. He grew up racing at the nearby Valley Preferred Cycling Center, is friends with some of the staff, and has been covered by and written for the magazine. However, I have only met him on occasion and have no personal relationship with him. He agreed to this interview with only one request: that his agent, Heather Novickis, be allowed to listen in. At no point did she interject any comments; Lea spoke freely. The transcript that follows has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Bicycling: When were you notified of the positive test?
Bobby Lea: I got the notification first by e-mail and then by postal mail. The e-mail came while I was at the Pan Am Championships. I found out about it before elimination round for the omnium.
You said in your letter you attribute the positive to taking Percocet the night before as a sleep aid. Did you think the result was a mistake, or did you know what happened?
Lea: When I read it and saw the results I knew exactly what had happened. The first reaction was disbelief, and I couldn’t [pause] I really couldn’t believe I was going to end my career like that. I’d always prided myself, my whole career, on doing things the right way and being so careful never to take anything that was banned. I really couldn’t believe that it would all be over like that. At the same time, I still had to shift gears and figure out how to get through the omnium. I knew, if there was a chance to get exonerated and move past it, I needed to get those critical Olympic qualifier points, for me and USA Cycling. If we didn’t get those, the Olympics don’t happen regardless of the outcome of this case. That was a really tough handful of hours.
How did you get through the race?
Lea: Looking back I have no idea. It was [pause] probably one of the hardest things I’ve had to do in my cycling career. The elimination on its own brings up enough anxiety in even the best track racers. I was in quite a tough time in that race, everything else being equal. On one hand I’m thinking about the Olympics and putting this distraction aside to at least try to give myself a chance to get to the Olympics and get past it, but at the same time, walking up to the line I was thinking, Oh my God, this is going to be one of the last times I toe the start line as a professional bike racer.
You said in your letter that you took Percocet the night before track nationals when you ran out of your normal sleep aid, and that you have a prescription. What was that prescription for originally, and had you used Percocet previously?
Lea: I got the prescription for Percocet for two reasons. It was primarily for pain management in the event of a crash. I got it right before a trip to Japan and Taiwan in 2014. I knew that if I crashed over there, I could take it and make it home to the hospital and to doctors that I trust. And the second reason was as a sleep aid. Sometimes that’s the most comfortable thing in coach and I’ve used it on occasion to sleep on those transatlantic flights.
You wrote that the night you took it you didn’t do what you’ve done so many times before: check to see if a medication is on the banned list. I’m sure you’ve run the scenario again a million times. Why didn’t you?
Lea: You’re right, I’ve thought about that so many times. There’s a couple of things [pause]. Although I can’t recall in my memory typing in the drug to check it, I really, really have trouble believing that I never would’ve done that. So I have to, although I can’t remember doing it, I have to believe that I had done that because I just don’t think that I would’ve been so careless taking a real-deal drug like that so recklessly. The second part is that the way I’d seen it used, from people that I trust, there were no red flags to me. There was nothing I’d seen that was showing me that using it in the manner that I did was problematic [from a doping standpoint]. It’s a commonly used painkiller in cycling, especially for crashes. I know people have used it as a sleep aid on flights. To me, the thought of using it to ride a bike faster is ludicrous, it helps to sleep, so that part never really crossed my mind.
That raises an important question. There’s been a lot of debate about painkiller use in cycling the past couple years, in particular Tramadol, which is not banned, with some people saying no prescription painkillers should be used. How does this fit into that conversation?
Lea: Well, if I was going to use a painkiller to ride better I wouldn’t use this. I would’ve used a Tramadol because, frankly, it is legal. That’s a tough question. But as far as I’m concerned and my own use of Percocet, I know how I use it, so I can only speak to that.
Once you were notified, did you have conversations with USADA about whether there was a possibility of a reduced ban? If so, on what grounds—the amount of the drug in your system? The question of intent to dope?
Lea: The amount that was in my system was very, very small. Almost 24 hours after ingestion, the drug is very nearly gone, and there were 57 nanograms of a metabolite of oxycodone in that sample. But with oxycodone there’s no threshold. So even though the amount present, even by USADA’s admission, was low it was still there. As far as conversations about reductions in ban and intent to dope, those conversations I assume happened between my lawyer and USADA. I was not part of them.
What do you think would be a fair suspension?
Lea: Based on past oxycodone cases, it seems pretty clear that the sanction should be six months. The typical ban has been four to six months. It’s a long way from six to 16.
So do you know where the 16-month suspension came from?
Lea: No, I really don’t. My lawyer and I have been racking our brains to try to figure out where that came from.
You’ve said you’ll appeal the ruling to CAS for a reduction. What are the grounds you’re using for that request?
Lea: My understanding from the conversation I had with my lawyer is that the grounds for reduction have to do with the updated 2015 WADA code. As you may know, the code starts with mandatory four-year sentences for prohibited substances [those that are banned at all times] but along with the article on four-year bans, there’s an article that allows more leniency for specified substances where the intent clearly isn’t to cheat. WADA uses the language “athletes who cheat” for prohibited substances, but in specified substances, it’s understood that there’s a very strong chance that the ingestion was accidental and there was no intent to dope. The reason we have to go to CAS, and what we’re looking for is a hearing panel who’s ready to write a new legal precedent, is because past oxycodone cases were under the 2009 code and we can’t go in with a one-to-one case comparison there. But that’s where the history of six-month bans comes from. [Editors’ note: In the 2015 WADA Code, there are three broad classes of banned substance: prohibited in all sports at all times, prohibited in competition only, and prohibited in particular sports. Specified substances are a subset of those classes. Oxycodone is classed as a prohibited substance, but is banned only in-competition.]
This is an Olympic year coming up. If it wasn’t, would your response be the same—would you still appeal?
Lea: Considering the length of the sanction, I think that doesn’t change the desire to appeal. But yes, had this case happened 12 months earlier, a 16-month sentence wouldn’t have represented a death sentence. In this case it may as well be a four-year ban. I’ll be just shy of 33rd birthday at the Olympics, and although you never say never, the thought was 2016 would be my last year racing.
When you were informed of the positive, did you tell family and friends about it? What were those conversations like?
Lea: I did. I kept a very small circle of people that knew about it. To be honest, before that letter I wrote, it was seemingly unavoidable to have a sanction, but we weren’t looking at a career-ending sanction that would take me out of the Olympics. We didn’t expect a six-month process either. So I kept it small because I [pauses] wanted tight control of the information that was out there. I wanted to adjudicate the case and get the sanction and move on.
But as far as the people I did tell, those were probably the hardest conversations I have ever had because [pauses] how do you even tell someone about that?
The people that I told are the ones closest to me. And they’re on the one hand the people who you should be able to tell stuff to the easiest. But at the same time they’re the ones who support you the most and so you’re letting them down the most. It’s incredibly hard.
[Note: at the end of our interview, Novickis pointed out that Lea’s lawyer had also asked him to keep the information private while the case proceeded.]
And that means there were a lot of people you didn’t tell. What was that like, because you’re provisionally suspended and people were surely asking why you weren’t racing?
Lea: That part was really hard. Because outside of that really close circle of less than probably 10 people at the most—including the ones USADA had to notify—there’s a lot of people who are very close to me who I consider very good friends, and I had to lie to them for months. Coming up to an Olympic year, there’s a lot of my friends and supporters who’ve been excited about my ride and the World Cup circuit, and I had to lie about why I wasn’t racing and why I was doing what I was doing. As time went on it bothered me more and more. I started to resent every question and in the last few weeks I all but lost the ability to even fake excitement when someone asked me about the Olympics.
Given the sport’s past and that dopers have often lied, a lot of people will probably not believe you. What do you say to them?
Lea: That’s a really good question. In the more than three months now since that notification, there have been a lot of perspective changes. The elements that I was worried about have shifted dramatically. And it’s appearing as though the people who know me the most know me, trust me, and believe me. At the end of the day, if I’m accepted, then we’ll see what happens when the rubber meets the road and this is public. But I think I understand that the ones that matter are the ones who accept it. Outside of that circle it’s outside of my control. There’s not much I can do about that. That’s hard, that’s a tough one. It’s a little scary and intimidating imagining the negative blowback that I know will happen. But at the end of the day, I’m the one who has to live with my actions and I know what I did. I made a mistake, but I feel like at least I can take some comfort in knowing it was just a mistake. It wasn’t an attempt to cheat. Opinions will vary but I know what I did.
What would you say if the situation was reversed, and it was a colleague coming out with this story?
Lea: It’s not one I have experience with. I don’t know how I’d answer with that.
What I’m getting at is that a lot of people are understandably quick to just say, “Oh, there’s another doper in cycling.” Has this experience changed that reaction for you?
Lea: There’s a lot of issues around doping, and you have to have your head in the sand to believe everything is perfect. We all get into this sport thinking that it’s clean and everyone’s doing the right thing. When I was younger I realized that probably wasn’t the case. And wanting to do it the right way, that maybe I would have to reassess my goal, and change what I wanted to do, because doping was a road I wasn’t willing to go down. I had that mindset and I realized that there’s a lot of things that are out of my control, I had to come to terms with the fact that I needed to be comfortable with what I was doing and maybe I’d have the success I was looking for and maybe I wouldn’t. Maybe the other guys who beat me were on drugs, maybe they just pedaled a bike better than me that day. But at the end of the day I knew I needed to be comfortable with what I was doing because I never wanted that situation years down the road where I have to tell my kids that daddy took drugs to try to win bike races.
Do you worry about that legacy, and that this could taint your career?
Lea: At first I was really concerned about how this would impact my career and how it’s viewed. When you’re faced with an unexpected end to your career, you think a lot about what does it mean, what have I accomplished, and am I happy with that? Do I need that result I was trying to get in 10 months’ time? Does the ending change the body of work, and what is the body of work? Can I walk away and be content with what I’ve done? The answer is it’s complicated. I don’t think I fully understand it yet. But I always believed that, on my day, I could be one of the best track riders in the world and I have been trying really hard to prove that to myself. I think I did that last year. The medal at World Championships was not a freebie. That was a day when everything wasn’t going right; in fact it was going wrong. The whole winter season in the World Cup, the Six-Day races, maybe just as much as anything, the respect and acceptance I seemed to be getting from riders I very much look up to and my peers on the circuit, I think I can say I’ve answered that. And I still want more. I still want the Olympics. So to circle back around to your question, I don’t think a comparison is fair or accurate, and this comes down to how I view my own career. Everyone will view it differently, but I’m the one who has to feel good about what I’m doing.
You’re riding a bit of a fine line here. You’re accepting responsibility for your actions, but you’re also appealing to CAS. Do you think people will get the finer shadings of that?
Lea: I don’t really know the answer to that; it remains to be seen. Ultimately the legal language that really is critical to my appeal is a little over my head.
You talked about being able to write your own ending. What does that look like?
Lea: The idea of going out on top is something any elite athlete can relate to. It’s something very few truly get the chance to do. I consider myself lucky to have that opportunity, because the Olympics, to end your career there has to be considered ending on a high no matter the result. And of course ending with a medal, I can’t even call it a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. The chance is so much smaller even than that. To have that opportunity for a capstone race that’s the culmination of a lifetime of work? And I’d love to come back to T-Town and close out the season and career right here, where my first track race was in probably 1990. I couldn’t think of a better place to do my last.
And what’s the other side of that? What if you lose?
Lea: I think there are so many different ways that this could resolve. For the sake of keeping the focus and keeping my foot on the gas with my training so that if I do get cleared to return to competition and I am so lucky to reach Worlds, I need to be more than 100 percent focused on that. I’ve thought a little about it but I can’t afford to spend too much time thinking about the alternative.
How do you hope the fans and public will see this?
Lea: I really hope that there’s understanding and tolerance for a mistake. It’s a mistake with big consequences, no matter what the ruling is on appeal. The only part that makes me personally able to accept it a little more is that at least I know that when I was pedaling the bike there wasn’t anything extra there.
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