World War Cycling: France

After two years of strenuous denials in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, French rider Richard Virenque finally admitted to doping in 2000. The venue for his confession was a French courthouse, Virenque providing evidence for his role in the Festina Affair.

The Festina team were ranked number one in the world heading into the 1998 Tour de France, and Virenque – who had won the King of the Mountains jersey every year since ’94, and come second overall in ’97 – was one of the race favourites.

The 1998 Tour began in Dublin, Ireland, but before a single pedal had been turned over, scandal broke.

Catch up on the rest of World War Cycling
PART 1: World War Cycling: The Prologue
PART 2: World War Cycling: The United States of America
PART 3: World War Cycling: Italy
PART 4: World War Cycling: Doping learnings of America for make benefit glorious nation of Kazakhstan
PART 5: World War Cycling: Spain
PART 6: World War Cycling: Germany and Denmark

On July 8, Willy Voet, a Belgian soigneur for Festina, was stopped by French customs officials as he drove a team car to Calais, intending to get the ferry for England, and then another on to Dublin.

In his book Breaking the Chain, Voet outlines just what he had in two refrigerated bags behind the driver’s seat:

“234 doses of EPO, 80 flasks of human growth hormone, 160 capsules of male hormone, testosterone, and 60 pills called Asaflow, a product based on Aspirin, which makes the blood more fluid.”

However Voet was more concerned about his personal stash, a concoction known as ‘Belgian mix’, which contained “amphetamines, caffeine, cocaine, heroin, painkillers and sometimes corticosteroids”.

Voet had two bottles of the mix – one for himself, and a second which he intended to give to Festina rider Laurent Dufaux, the Swiss having ‘sold’ his soigneur a pet dog in return for 3000 French francs and a bottle of mix.

Voet was arrested, and the Festina team went into damage control, saying the soigneur was not due to be with the team during the Tour, implying the pharmacy in the team car was for Voet’s personal use.

Their lame excuses fell through pretty quickly, as the team’s headquarters were raided, with police finding evidence that doping on Festina was indeed systematic.

After three days in Ireland, the Tour returned to France on July 14, and Festina directeur sportif Bruno Roussel and doctor Eric Rijckaert were arrested. Eventually they admitted to a team-wide doping program, and on July 17 Festina were expelled from the Tour.

But the French authorities were far from done. With Voet having crossed multiple boarders with a car full of performance enhancers and narcotics, this was an international drug-smuggling operation. And there was no way that Festina were the only team breaking these laws.

Over the Tour’s three weeks, multiple teams’ hotel rooms were raided, riders strip-searched, and more arrests ensued.

The peloton were outraged, staging a sit-in and neutralising a stage in an attempt to stop “being treated like cattle”, as 1996 Tour champion and unofficial peloton spokesman Bjarne Riis complained at the time.

That the French police were getting results – finding more evidence of doping on other teams, as well as forcing a number of riders, such as Riis, to dispose of their products lest they be caught red-handed – was beside the point for the peloton, and teams began leaving en masse.

189 riders began the 1998 Tour in Dublin. When Marco Pantani rode onto the Champs Elysees as the Maillot Jaune on August 2, only 96 remained in the race.

And, as we’ve outlined previously, a 2013 French Senate hearing into doping at the ’98 Tour found that Pantani had been using EPO – he was just lucky enough not to have been caught and arrested.

Of course he was not alone in the Senate report – 18 riders were named as having tested positive, with a further 12 considered suspicious. Included on the lists were second and third-place getters Jan Ullrich and Bobby Julich, as well as the green (sprinters’) jersey winner and runner-up Erik Zabel and Stuart O’Grady.

The sanctions? Nothing, with the Senate declaring, “Nobody will face sanctions. We aren’t policemen. We aren’t magistrates. We haven’t noted absolute lies but put-offs and self-censorship.”

In the aftermath of the race members of the Festina team – both riders and back-room staff – went on trial. But while the rest of the team seemed determined to admit what they had done and move on with their careers, Virenque stuck to his guns, maintaining absolute innocence.

As such, he was allowed to join the Italian Polti team and ride in the 1999 Tour de France, where finished in eighth place overall, once again winning the King of the Mountains jersey. He followed that up with sixth overall and a stage win at the 2000 Tour.

Virenque did eventually admit to doping while on the Festina team, at the aforementioned trial in 2000. He was given a nine-month suspension for his admission, which was reduced to six-and-a-half months.

This, for the man who upon learning Willy Voet had been arrested, was alleged to have asked his directeur sportif, “My stuff – what am I going to do now”, and who Voet himself said he first gave performance-enhancing drugs to in 1993.

While he missed the 2001 Tour, Virenque was back in the peloton for the ’02 Tour, winning a stage, before claiming two more King of the Mountains jerseys at the ’03 and ’04 editions.

As for why he stayed quiet on his doping while his former teammates were willing to admit it, Virenque said it was simple – honesty didn’t pay in the peloton:

“Eight idiots from Festina got caught and were expected to tell everything, but it [doping] was an institution in cycling. I didn’t accept it. As I saw it, everyone was trying to make me say the things that everyone knew but that everyone didn’t say.

“What did we do wrong? We got caught. Why this great pursuit of us to make us talk so that we could be punished? That was what I did not manage to understand.

“They wanted nine of us to carry the can. That was why I stayed silent. If I talked I would be suspended. If I didn’t talk, I wouldn’t be suspended.”

While he did end up being suspended, Richard Virenque is perhaps the most successful French rider of the past 25 years, winning the Tour de France’s King of the Mountains jersey seven times between 1994 and 2004, and coming third overall in ’96 and second in ’97.

As for the rest of the Festina team, Voet, Roussel, and three other members of the back-room staff were given suspended sentences and fines ranging from 10,000 to 50,000 French francs (approximately $US1400 to $US7000).

Giving the verdict in December 2000, it was noted the light nature of the punishments came about because “the court took the context into account, in particular the widespread recourse to doping and the deficiencies in the fight against doping”.

Next week: Belgium and Eddy Merckx, the greatest cyclist of all time, who thrice tested positive.