The Festina scandal provided a stark insight into the world of doping within the professional peloton.(Image credit: AFP)
Laurent Jalabert led a rider protest in the wake of the 1998 Festina affair(Image credit: AFP Photo)
A message denouncing French rider Richard Virenque doping was painted on the prologue course in Le Puy du Fou in the 1999 Tour de France after the previous year's Festina scandal.(Image credit: AFP Photo)
1999 race winner Micheal Boogerd leads Richard Virenque in the mountains(Image credit: AFP)
Richard Virenque hopes that every rider from the 1998 Festina team is included in the French Senate’s list of positive samples from that year's Tour de France.
Speaking after the first mountain stage of this year's Tour, Virenque, who was expelled from the 1998 race after Festina soigneur, Willy Voet, was arrested with doping products, told Cyclingnews that it would be scandal if all nine Festina were not among the positives.
The Tour was marred by the seizure of drugs within Festina, hotel raids, and a raft of teams leaving the race. Marco Pantani was eventual winner of the race but UCI president Pat McQuaid has already gone on record stating that the UCI would consider stripping the late Italian of his crown if he was also among those who tested positive.
The tests are part of a retroactive inquiry carried out by the French Anti-Doping Agency AFLD in 2004. The retroactive testing was part of a French Senate inquiry into the effectiveness of the fight against doping in France.
"There were controls before the start of the 1998 Tour de France and these were all frozen. Fifteen years later I've found out that there were a number of positives. I hope that in the names there are all the Festina riders because if not then it's a scandal because that year we had to leave the race and there were lots of attacks on our team for several years. I got a one-year suspension and they forced me to talk about the truth of doping," Virenque told Cyclingnews.
Despite a number of his teammates immediately admitting to doping after the Festina Affair, Virenque maintained his innocence until a court case in 2000, and even published a defence called “Ma Verité” (My Truth) in the intervening period.
"Jalabert is in a difficult situation today but I think it's more of a personal attack on him. It's different to what I went through. I was a rider at the time during the Festina affair and now Jalabert is retired, it's 15 years later," Virenque said.
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Virenque was then asked if cycling was now clearer than during his era, to which he responded. "The rules are different now and it's cleaner now. There are concrete rules today and if everyone pays attention to the rules it's possible to ride clean. Cycling is now an example that other sports can look at and it's 15 years ahead of where other sports are."
Asked if would have preferred to ride in today's current peloton or in the 1990s, Virenque said: "I could have been a great rider from any period, as long as I had a number on my back and team to ride for.”
Daniel Benson was the Editor in Chief at Cyclingnews.com between 2008 and 2022. Based in the UK, he joined the Cyclingnews team in 2008 as the site's first UK-based Managing Editor. In that time, he reported on over a dozen editions of the Tour de France, several World Championships, the Tour Down Under, Spring Classics, and the London 2012 Olympic Games. With the help of the excellent editorial team, he ran the coverage on Cyclingnews and has interviewed leading figures in the sport including UCI Presidents and Tour de France winners.
