On May 7, 2006, at the UCI Tour of Turkey, Papp was found positive for metabolites of testosterone at the post stage test for which he won – his fourth of the event. While he awaited definitive proof from his B sample, Papp’s continued racing into July. Competing in Tuscany’s 100-mile Granfondo Michele Bartoli, where he crashed with less than a half-mile to go. Papp initially thought he’d only endured a few scrapes. But by the time he lay down in his hotel room, his left buttock had swelled grotesquely. Papp cajoled his team soigneur into driving him to the closest hospital, in nearby Pescia. For he knew the injury was not innocuous. Surgeons operated on Papp several days later, removing a mass of EPO-damaged sludge that amounted to roughly a fourth of his blood volume.
Getting the honest truth from a convicted doper is a rare thing. So we quizzed Papp into the choices that led him to the dark side: “I took a few years away from full time racing to finish first my undergraduate and then to complete a Fellowship at Graduate level. When I came back in 2001 and was riding on form, and a guy who I could normally beat and who had suffered with me in the mountains for as long as I could remember – I recall him on one climb just riding away from me, so fast, so eye openingly fast, for a sprinter!!! I thought something had changed. Other guys were at a whole new level after only a few years away. When I asked a team mate- he laughed at my naivety.
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