CAMPAIGNING MINISTER MEANS BUSINESS FOR TRICKY CYCLISTS

THE real winner of the 1998 Tour de France did not wear the yellow jersey
once during the competition. She was not even riding; but from her office
in the 15th arrondissement of Paris, Marie-Georqe Buffet, the Communist
youth and sports minister, triumphed in her year-long battle against
illegal drug use in sport.

She had said she wanted the Tour to reach its conclusion. "When a patient
is ill, you do not kill him, you try to find a cure," she said. But it was
her diagnosis and her decision to use the world's premier cycling race to
draw attention to doping that nearly finished it off.

It should have come as no surprise, however; from the moment she took
office a year ago she has had made fighting against doping her ministry's
priority. "All the information I found when I arrived left no doubt as to
the breadth of the problem," said Buffet in an interview last October. "The
most important thing is to show that this time the political will to fight
doping will qo beyond statenents of good intention."

And indeed she has put her money where her mouth is, doubling the part of
her budget allocated to fight against dopinq from Ffr7.2 million ($1.2 m)
in 1997 to Ffr14.2m in 1998. She has initiated and presented to parliament
a new law to fiqht drug abuse. It has already been approved unanimously in
the Senate and is due to be debated by the National Assembly in September.
The law targets in particular the traffickers in illeqal drugs.

Cycling was clearly in her sights and the Dutch team TVM had been under
suspicion since last March when a team car was found to be transporting
illegal drugs. But few thought she would go so far as attacking 'Le Tour',
the event that she has described as "part of the national heritage".

What the cycling fraternity had counted on was the protection that the
French executive and establishment could rely on in years gone by.
Effectively they were beyond the law and could act as they pleased. Times
have changed.

For Buffet's determination is backed by an equal determination on the part
of the magistrates. A new breed of French 'juges d'instructions',
investigating magistrates, is not inclined to let go easily, as was shown
in the case of Bernard Tapie, a former minister, mayor and owner of the
Olympique Marseille football team who was pursued and sentenced to jail for
fixing a football match.

Roland Dumas, president of the constitutional court, entangled in the Elf
scandal is another example of the new culture of judicial persistence, as
is Laurent Fabius, the former prime minister, dogged by an affair of
Aids-contaminated blood and a scandal involving scores of leading
politicians caught in the illegal financing of their parties.

Some are wary of the judges' new power. Books have been written about their
growing influence.

The fact that judges are nowadays doing their job still comes as a
surprise. Nowhere was this more evident than in the indignant reactions of
Tour de France riders.

When the police subjected them to searches, they condemned it as an outrage
as if officers - carrying out magistrates' instructions - were somehow
exceeding their authority by having the cheek to search for illegal drugs.
The riders, after all, are not average 'citoyens'.