In autumn 2015, Tom Danielson felt he had hit rock bottom. After being notified that he had tested positive for testosterone, having already served a six-month ban for blood doping three years earlier, he had to face hard facts: “I’d lost my career, my credibility, all of my money, everything,” he says. It was a career that at its outset had promised so much, with a Vuelta a España stage win in 2006, but which ended, by his own admission, “in a ball of flames”.
By the 2020s, Danielson had established himself as a coach and was thankful to be living a steadier kind of life. But then in February last year, nearly a decade on from the ignominious end to his pro career – during which he had ridden…
