Bellocq was a doctor with a reputation
Bellocq had earned his reputation in the 1970s, when he was team doctor for Peugeot. Those were the days when Maurice de Muer was the unluckiest directeur sportif in Christendom: Jean-Pierre de Mondenard claims that, out of seventy positives between 1970 and 1978, De Muer's riders accounted for twenty-four. ("I can't have eyes in the back of my head to watch my riders twenty-four hours a day," De Muer claimed, in defence.)
In 1976, a Peugeot rider, Rachel Dard, got involved in aconvoluted attempt to cheat a dope control that ultimately saw him racing a train from Dax to Paris in order to destroy evidence of his wrong-doing. When l'Equipe got hold of the story, Dard confessed, and produced a prescription Bellocq had written him for doping products. The biggest problem here was that, at the time, Bellocq wasn't a qualified doctor and shouldn't have been writing prescriptions. The French fed dropped Bellocq from its medical committee.
Bellocq stayed on with Peugeot but went independent in 1979. His client list included the great and the good of cycling, along with a few also rans: Bernard Hinault, Greg LeMond, Robert Millar, Gilbert Duclos-Lassalle, Jean-François Bernard, Ronan Pensec and Pascal Simon were just some of the riders who beat a path to the French doctor's door. In 1987 he was working with Roger Legeay at Z-Peugeot, and he again worked for Legeay, at GAN, shortly before his death in 1993.
Bellocq's speciality was hormone rebalancing therapy. In 1991, he published a book, Sport et Dopage - Le Grande Hypocrisie, which explained his thinking: "I believe that the limits of sports medicine amount to stopping an athlete from digging into his body's resources, and replenishing a body from which professional sport demands so much." That replenishing is where the problem arises.
Over the course of a stage race, a rider's testosterone levels will naturally fall. As will their levels of other hormones, such as cortisone or EPO. Bellocq advocated rebalancing those levels. Whatever the body naturally used and couldn't replace quick enough, well it was permissible to top that up to its natural levels.
In Sport et Dopage, Bellocq explained how he applied his beliefs to Tour riders during his time at Peugeot: "During the three-week Tour de France we proposed a treatment based on small quantities of suprarenal hormones after twelve days of competition. In our opinion the use of corticoids helps delay fatigue in professional riders. It's up to us to help these riders, who in effect are putting their health at risk." (It's probably just a coincidence that, in the 1988 Tour, the Grenoble to Villard de Lans time trial came after twelve days of competition.)
The problems with Bellocq's argument begin when you start to question how you draw the line between topping up to a natural level and over-filling the tank. What, in other words, is the difference between hormone rebalancing and doping? Bellocq, in Sport et Dopage, reached for a response to that question, arguing that the difference was the same as "the difference between the love of a good wine and alcoholism." (What is it with these doctors and their drink analogies? Michele Ferrari compared EPO to orange juice.)
Another failure in Bellocq's argument was that he didn't always know the full consequences of the drugs he administered. Consider the case of Bernard Thévenet, a Peugeot rider in the seventies and one of Bellocq's clients. Nanard won the Tour twice - in 1975 and 1977 - and both victories were shrouded in rumours of doping. Thévenet's testing positive at least three times between 1976 and 1977 didn't help dispel those rumours.
But it's after the 1977 Tour that Thévenet's story becomes relevant: he was hospitalised in 1978, diagnosed as having problems with his adrenal glands. While in hospital, he confessed to a journalist friend that he had doped. He later admitted the same to Pierre Chany at France-Vélo,highlighting the physical cost of his doping: "I've been doped with cortisone for three seasons. The result is visible now: I'm barely able to sit on a bike."
Generally though Bellocq's clients seem to agree with their doctor's theories. Consider, for instance, Bernard Hinault who - interviewed in 1988 for Tonus, a medical magazine - had this to say: "There should be systematic check-ups every month. That way the products that are forbidden now would be allowed, albeit in reasonable quantities. There are some hormones that could be used, no problem, as long as their use was in conjunction with a monthly medical check-up. I agree with Dr François Bellocq, who was my doctor, when it comes to these kinds of treatments."
Philippe Brunel interviewed le blaireau for l'Equipe in 1999 and asked if he favoured hormone rebalancing: "Yes, perhaps, with one condition, that it be strictly controlled. Hormones are given to bed-ridden elderly to regulate mineral levels so that they do not degrade too much, so why not? It's necessary to study the issue, to approach it with caution."
That interview also shows how the logic of hormone rebalancing seems to lead inexorably to blood doping. Here's Hinault on that subject: "[Francesco] Moser made use of auto-transfusion. So he was playing with his own blood. He did no more no less that the Finnish athletes, Lasse Viren and the others. It suffices to take some of one's own blood during the spring when it is rich, hyper-oxygenated, and to re-inject it when one is fatigued. Is that really doping? Maybe not, except if the blood is placed into a machine to re-oxygenate it to the maximum."
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