A lot of people wonder if taking EPO is risky to health. I'd like to reply to that concern with the following list:
Elbow
Shoulder
Collarbone (twice)
Back
Hip
Fingers (multiple)
Ribs
Wrist
Nose
Those are the bones I've broken during my racing career. This is not an unusual list in our profession. It's funny: in the States, everybody connects bike racing with health. But when you get to the top level, you see the truth: bike racing is not a healthy sport in any sense of the word. (As my former teammate Jonathan Vaughters likes to say, If you want to feel what it's like to be a bike racer, strip down to your underwear, drive your car 40 mph, and leap out the window into a pile of jagged metal.) So when it comes to the risks of EPO, they tend to feel pretty small.
(Tyler Hamilton and Daniel Coyle, The Secret Race: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour de France [New York: Bantam Books Trade Paperbacks, 2013], 57)
Note from KBJ: The list is familiar. During my 34 years of cycling, I have broken an elbow, a collarbone (twice), my back, and ribs.
