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On Sunday, 20 years ago, the Festina scandal, soon to break out, turned the Tour de France upside down. However, the case was only the beginning of the horror of doping the following years.
Willy Voet loaded 8 July 1998 special luggage in his Fiat. The supervisor of the French cycling team Festina leaves for Calais, where he must take the ferry to Dublin
Three days later, the Tour de France begins with the star of Festina, Richard Virenque. At 6:30, Voet takes the road of the department 78 and goes to the small border post of Neuville-en-Ferrain in Belgium. As always, he has team shirts and bike caps as a souvenir for customs officers. But this time, the Belgian is sent back
His car is felted and Voet white chalk: The digs of the customs officers bring to the light 236 bulbs of EPO, 82 packets of growth hormones, testosterone preparations , amphetamines, cortecoids. This could easily make way for the entire pack: The biggest doping scandal in the Tour de France to date has taken off.
News of the French-Belgian border town is spreading slowly in Dublin. Voet is detained in Lille – suspected drug trafficking. Festina is still at the start, the mountain specialist Virenque, who one year after his second place behind Jan Ullrich finally wants to win the tour, piloting the best prologue of his career.
After that, he speaks indignantly: "I'm not responsible for the things our staff does." It takes five more days before the Virenque team is removed from the race. the team Bruno Roussel is arrested, as is the team doctor Eric Rijkaert, imprisoned for 100 days despite a serious lung disease
The doctor unpacked the interrogations, evoking a doping system put in place in the team since 1994: was always full of drugs ". Even the Swiss Alex Zülle, twice second, is confessed, only Virenque defends stubbornly. Only in court, he gives two years later in tears of doping and is blocked. After his resignation in 2004, he became in France a popular specialist of Eurosport
The Tour & # 39; 98 continues, the pros sit on the asphalt and protest against the alleged arbitrariness of the police. During raids, doping agents are found in almost all teams and drivers and caregivers are appointed. The TVM Dutch team fled to Switzerland during the tour, and the Spanish teams come out of the trip and return home.
Only 96 out of 198 started riding on Paris Champs on August 2nd Elysees, among them Jan Ullrich in second place behind Marco Pantani. The nightmare, however, is only the first stop of the following doping scandals to riders Riccardo Ricco, Michael Rasmussen, Alexander Vinokurov, Alberto Contador, Ivan Basso, Ullrich and others, is over.
The following year, the organizers of the tour apparently the best that could happen: The patient cured of cancer, Lance Armstrong, wins his first tour of France and is celebrated as a great innovator and bearer of his life. hope. (dpa)
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