“At the time, I was outside of reality. » Marion Sicot's voice broke several times on Wednesday at the bar of the Montargis judicial court (Loiret). His hearing by the meticulous president Elsa David was a brutal plunge into the sad reality of his doping, between 2016 and 2019, with EPO and clenbuterol.
Was she aware of the risks she was taking? Marion Sicot, who still wears a bicycle tattoo on her wrist, admitted that she was then “in it at all costs”: “It is certain that there are heart risks, that we risk our lives… But I only saw myself as a cyclist, not as a woman.”
She took clenbuterol, a veterinary product, to lose weight. And she injected herself with EPO several times, sometimes intravenously: “It’s much riskier than intramuscularly. You have to be careful not to have any air bubbles.”
“I was declining”
In 2020, on France 2, Marion Sicot admitted an EPO injection, a desperate gesture, she said, to escape the “control” of her sports director Marc Bracke. He asked her for photos in her underwear. She spoke about this difficult period again on Wednesday: “I wasn’t doing well at all. It was complicated with my DS (Sports Director) and I couldn’t see myself existing other than as a professional sportswoman.”
She also showed self-criticism: “I was declining in my performance, but I was making less effort, too. So I looked for the easy way to stay at the same level.” The one who only has a few Top 10 finishes on her record admitted, a little bitterly, that this doping brought her “virtually no sporting benefit”.
After having, for a time, “curled up in lies”, this time she took responsibility for everything, including the first protocols, in 2016 and 2017. “In 2016, I had just left my first pro team and I said to myself that to succeed in turning pro again at that age, I had to show myself,” assured the athlete, for whom “doping is an integral part of cycling.” Marion Sicot had pro status for two seasons but was never paid to race.
She also told how she had obtained performance-enhancing products. First, she said, via a convenience prescription obtained by an acquaintance, a former amateur cyclist, from a doctor known for being “facilitative.” » These two men were also tried on Wednesday. Then on the Internet, “in a few clicks,” she said. She says she paid between 600 and 1,200 euros per EPO protocol.
One year suspended prison sentence required
The prosecutor requested a one-year suspended prison sentence and a 5,000 euro fine against Marion Sicot and 18 months suspended prison sentence and a 10,000 euro fine against the former amateur cyclist, described as a “cynical facilitator”. Finally, Jean-Cédric Gaux requested an 18-month suspended prison sentence, a 20,000 euro fine and a two-year ban on activity against the doctor suspected of having prescribed EPO. The decision will be rendered on January 22, 2025.
Marion Sicot, who knew that she risked a suspended prison sentence, said she was “relieved” that this trial had passed. She sometimes wiped away a tear on the stand, especially when talking about her “regrets” and this “label that sticks to her skin”. But she showed a calm face when saying that she had “learned to live” during her four-year suspension: “In this quest for performance, I soiled my sport. I existed solely for the bike. I learned at 30 that sport was not my life. Just a part of my life.”
France
