CYCLING MUST TAKE ON CHEATS

If it forces cycling into a long-overdue confrontation with the drug takers,
the fallout from what has become known as "the Festina affair" can only
benefit the sport. After the detention of Bruno Roussel, the Festina team
manager, and Eric Ryckaert, the team doctor, by French police at the finish
of stage four and the subsequent raid on the team's rooms in their nearby
hotel, the International Cycling Union (UCI), cycling's governing body,
finally acted. Under pressure from sponsors, media and the tour organisation
itself, the UCI suspended Roussel's team manager's licence.

Jean Marie Leblanc, the Tour de France director, and Hein Verbruggen, UCI
president, were mistaken if they believed that the race would be allowed to
continue in peace following Roussel's departure.

On 8 July, three days prior to the tour's start in Dublin, Festina masseur
Willy Voet, driving one of the cars issued to tour teams by the race
organisation in Paris for use during the race, was arrested by French
customs officers. They had found a huge cache of anabolic steroids and EPO,
human growth hormone, in the boot of the car.

Although the discovery was initially dismissed as the mistaken behaviour of
one errant team employee, Voet's admission to police that he was acting
under team orders led to the Tour de France facing one of cycling's biggest
doping scandals.

It is common knowledge among the riders, journalists and team managers that
the systematic use of drugs such as EPO has been gathering pace in the 1990s.

The success of the tour itself may be partly to blame. The riders and
sponsors all know that their professional existence depends on a successful
showing in the sport's most famous event.

Off the record, many riders, under constant pressure for results, are
willing to admit their part in professional cycling's drugs problem, which
has been likened to an arms race in which no one is willing to concede an
advantage. Few are prepared to be named as the source of such damning
information.

This reluctance to come forward has allowed administrators such as the
affable Leblanc to take refuge in the lack of public evidence and point to
the number of negative test results. Publicly he apportions blame wherever
possible to a scandal-mongering press. Privately, both he and Verbruggen
must now be wholly aware of the battle against drugs that the sport faces.

For most insiders the Festina affair was a scandal they had been expecting.
While the dangers of steroids are well known, the more sophisticated EPO,
which artificially boosts the red blood cell count, has been widely linked
by doctors and other sports administrators to a series of cardiac scares in
endurance athletes over the past few years.

The UCI has tacitly admitted as much by introducing random "health checks",
as they are known. in dawn raids on team hotels. The UCI's medical team -
the "vampires", as the riders call them - take a blood sample. If a rider's
red blood cell count exceeds 50 per cent, he maybe forbidden to race for the
next 15 days.

But this is not a dope test and does not provide proof of the presence of
EPO, even though it has been interpreted by many as precisely that. A
reliable test for EPO exists but the UCI has not introduced regular testing
at major events.

This has served neither the riders nor the administrators, but with so many
well-heeled corporate sponsors now investing in the sport, the bad publicity
of a rash of positive tests is a terrifying spectre for cycling's governing
body.

As the revelations concerning Festina gathered pace, Leblanc fought a damage
limitation exercise against continuing press speculation.

On the day that Roussel was detained by police, the daily paper 'France
Soir' ran an interview with Gerard Gremion, a Swiss sports doctor. He
claimed that "99 per cent of all professional cyclists take drugs, including
those on the Tour de France".

Gremion's allegations, that "400 to 500 professionals are destroying their
health by taking banned substances", added to the damning flurry of
editorials in the French sports paper, 'L'Equipe', itself closely associated
with the Tour de France.

In an open attack on riders, 'directeur sportifs' and team managers, the
paper said that "we will no longer be duped".

Yet even as Festina's team hotel was being raided by police, tour director
Leblanc was adamant that no further action would be taken until formal
charges were made, preferring instead to blame "stupid rumours". Only a few
hours later, his denials fell by the wayside as he announced that the UCI
had suspended Roussel's team manager's licence.

"The executive committee of the UCI has ruled that the evidence is
sufficient for a provisional suspension of Bruno Roussel's team manager's
licence," Leblanc said. "The UCI understood the need to take urgent measures
to restore public confidence."

With Roussel and Ryckaert under further police investigation, the Tour de
France blithely carries on towards its conclusion in Paris on 2 August. But
the 180 riders competing for the greatest prize in endurance sport will not
be so innocently championed.

Checked-by: Melodi Cornett