EPO WAS JUST THE START. Over the next several years, Papp hired himself out to different teams and traveled the world. The races were in countries like Uruguay and Chile, where the drug enforcement was lax. Papp swapped doping recipes with other riders, worked with doctors in both California and Latin America, and consulted the Physicians' Desk Reference for guidance. He claims to have taken more than 100 different pharmaceutical substances during his doping days. Among the more exotic meds were a derivative of calf's blood and a pill-form heart-disease medication that dilates the veins for a supposed boost of energy.

Hard as it might be to fathom, cycling insiders aren't shocked by Papp's roster of abuse. "The drive to succeed makes many of these guys unbalanced," says Dawn Richardson, a doctor for the Team Type 1 cycling squad who's worked separately with confessed dopers. "Their need for approval is the same fatal defect that rock stars have."

In early 2006, Papp called a friend on the Tuscany-based Whistle squad, offering his services for the upcoming Tour of Cuba stage race. Whistle had an opening and gave Papp a chance.

He rode freakishly well. Sprinters never drop the best climbers on climbs, but with his drug program "firing on all cylinders," Papp did just that. Whistle offered him a contract for the remainder of the season.

Despite the fact that Papp was an experienced doper, he was dumbfounded by his initiation at Whistle. Soon after his arrival, he claims, Whistle personnel started him on a serious drug regimen, passing out a potent type of EPO. "I suspected doping would be part of the program, but I didn't know how profound it would be," says Papp.

(Representatives of the Whistle team, which is now called Cinelli OPD, did not respond to repeated requests from Outside to discuss Papp's allegations, which were partially aired during the Landis hearing. According to records from the Union Cycliste Internationale, pro cycling's governing body, no member of Whistle other than Papp tested positive for a banned substance in 2006.)

Papp says he got the standard stuff (EPO and human growth hormone) as well as the extreme: On one occasion, he claims he was given two syringes of "pot Belge," a mix that's said to include amphetamines and heroin. Papp injected some of it before a race and then discreetly injected more into his shoulder during the race. He felt a rush of energy—and then needed several days to recover.

Papp says he didn't dare tell his managers that he sometimes felt like a human pincushion—refusing drugs was considered untrustworthy. Instead he dwelled on the positives. The Tuscan landscapes were beautiful, the group rides star-studded.

But on a sunny day in May, Papp's European adventure started to sour. He had used his killer sprint to clinch his third stage win of the multi-stage 2006 Presidency Cycling Tour of Turkey. Afterwards, he was told to report to doping control.

The request itself wasn't cause for alarm. Papp didn't think he'd taken anything a test could find, and he was well schooled in the ways of foiling doping cops. Before certain races, he says, the Whistle riders often took "micro-doses" of EPO in order to both maintain their blood's high oxygen-carrying capacity and slide through drug controls undetected. In addition, Papp says some doping officials took bribes, looked the other way while you poured someone else's pee from an energy-gel packet into the cup, or said nothing as you contaminated the sample with slyly placed soap on your fingertips.

On that May day, however, Papp says his managers wanted him to use a different trick. Before Papp arrived at doping control, a Whistle team staffer pulled him aside. He revealed a bladder that was connected to a rubbery tube and contained an unknown concoction. Papp was expected to catheterize himself and fill up his own bladder with synthetic urine.

He shook his head. "It was a feeling of revulsion," he later said. "I couldn't do it."

Papp says his refusal broke an unwritten contract between doper and team. He claims that, soon after his test came back positive for the banned steroid androstenedione, his teammates and managers distanced themselves from him, worried that the test result could cast a shadow over the entire squad.

While he awaited definitive proof from his B sample, Papp's last race for Whistle came in July. Competing in Tuscany's 100-mile Granfondo Michele Bartoli, 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. He freaked out and went to the hospital. Surgeons operated on Papp several days later, removing a mass of EPO-damaged sludge that amounted to roughly a fourth of his blood volume. Back in the U.S., doctors would tell him he was lucky to be alive.

When Whistle staffers finally picked Papp up after his weeklong layup, they put him on a plane for the States. Five months after signing, the deal with Whistle was off.

"When they drove me to the airport, they didn't treat me like I was radioactive," says Papp, "but they weren't sorry to see me go."