CYCLING-EX-FESTINA OFFICIALS APPEAL AGAINST BANS

PARIS - Former Festina team sporting director Bruno
Roussel and masseur Willy Voet are appealing against suspensions of
five and three years respectively from cycling.

Lawyers for the two men, caught up in the Tour de France doping
scandal in July, said on Friday night they were lodging the appeals
with the French Cycling Federation (FFC), whose disciplinary committee
handed down the suspensions.

The FFC has not officially announced the suspensions, having simply
notified both men by letter.

Roussel, who admitted in July that his team carried out organised
doping, is contesting the legitimacy of the FFC to ban him rather than
the sanction as such, the lawyers said.

He believes the FFC, by turning a blind eye to doping in cycling over
the years, allowed the practice to flourish.

"By connivance, the federal authorities have for years allowed the
acceptance, at all professional and amateur levels, of the idea that a
clean victory was, if not impossible then at least improbable," they
said in a statement.

The Festina team were kicked out of the Tour de France in mid-July, a
week after the start and some 10 days after Voet was arrested by
customs officers with a carload of banned substances.

Checked-by: Rich O'Grady