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Dope problems resurface again
http://www.sina.com.cn 2004/02/02 13:46  Shanghai Daily

  Five years after the Festina scandal that nearly brought the Tour de France to its knees, doping has returned to haunt the sport of cycling.

  The new scandal which erupted this month was all the more shocking because it involved a top-flight team led by British time-trial world champion David Millar and Spanish road race world champion Igor Astarloa.

  After a nine-month investigation, French drug squad police raided the Cofidis headquarters and the office of a team doctor, seizing the medical records of several riders.

  A Cofidis physiotherapist, Bogdan Malejak, and a former team rider, Marek Rutkiewicz, were detained for questioning. Two other riders, Cedric Vasseur and Philippe Gaumont, were held a few days later.

  Malejak and Rutkiewicz were charged with providing drugs. Gaumont, a 1992 Olympic bronze medalist, was released after 24 hours but placed under judicial investigation.

  He admitted to police that he had used the performance-enhancing drug erythropoietin (EPO). Vasseur was freed without charge.

  After a few days of stunned silence, the cycling world threw itself into a soul-searching exercise that produced a flurry of proposals.

  Francois Migraine, the chairman of Cofidis, called on sponsors to act.

  "I'm ready to make some proposals, not in my own interest but in the name of all the sponsors because it really hurts to get smashed up by some small-time guys," he said.

  Migraine had harsh words for the riders, saying: "They are half-rotten mercenaries and their promises are not worth a damn."

  The French government announced an increase in random drug tests in France from 8,500 to 9,000 in 2004 and sports minister Jean-Francois Lamour, a former Olympic fencing champion, asked the National Olympic Committee to exclude from selection anyone involved in a doping investigation.

  The president of the French cycling professional league, Jean Cazeneuve, accepted that the cycling authorities' efforts to combat doping had failed.

  "Since 1999, there have been more and more tests, and blood tests. Everyone passes through the net, which means the net isn't working," he said. "We need tougher sanctions that act as deterrents."

  Tour organizers called on the International Cycling Union (UCI) to put its trust in the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) code and accept its two-year ban for doping offenders.

  Doping has been the plague of cycling ever since journalist Albert Londres described the riders as "the convicts of the road" when he followed the 1924 Tour.

  After French rider Roger Riviere was injured when he fell into a ravine and broke his neck during the 1960 Tour, pills were found in his jersey. He later admitted he had been taking up to 40 amphetamine tablets a day.

  In 1967, Britain's 1965 world champion Tom Simpson collapsed and died on Mont Ventoux. A post-mortem examination concluded that alcohol and amphetamines contributed to his death.

  In 1978, Michel Pollentier tested positive after winning the Alpe d'Huez stage and donning the yellow jersey.

  In 1998, Festina team assistant Willy Voet was arrested before the start of the Tour after customs officers found banned substances in his car. Eight of the nine Festina riders confessed to drug-taking.

  The Festina scandal spurred all the forces involved into action. Tests were reinforced, guilty riders were punished, cyclists promised not to use drugs and, to help them, races were shortened.

  But one of cycling's biggest problems is that those embroiled in drug-taking have often attracted sympathy rather than disapproval.

  In 1924, the founder of the Tour, Henri Desgranges, was able to pass off Londres's "convicts of the road" tag as a compliment.

  In 2002, the wife of Lithuanian rider Raim-ondas Rumsas was viewed as a martyr in her country when she was jailed after being arrested by French customs officers with 30 different kinds of drugs in her car on the day her husband finished third in the Tour.

  In this month's Cofidis affair, Gaumont has appeared on television channels, radio stations and newspaper front pages to assert that "maybe 90 percent of the riders are not clean."

  Gaumont said riders turned to drugs because of pressure from sponsors. But despite the lessons of the Festina scandal, critics say, little in cycling appears to have changed.




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