Doping threatens to haunt the 2006 Tour de France

By Siegfried Mortkowitz Jun 28, 2006, 11:14 GMT

Paris - Perhaps the organizers of the Tour de France will not mind very much that when the race starts on Saturday, the attention of most of the world's sports fans will be on the football World Cup.

For the world's most prestigious cycling event is being run this year under the shadow of a French doping trial, continued reports that seven-time Tour champion Lance Armstrong used illegal substances and, most damaging, a broad and seemingly endless Spanish doping investigation.

The Spanish probe has already deprived the Tour of one team, threatened the start of another team and implicated one of the favourites to win the race.

The Court for Arbitration for Sport (CAS), which is based in Lausanne, Switzerland, is to decide by Friday if the Spanish Astana team of Kazakh star Alexandre Vinokourov will be allowed to line up in Strasbourg for Saturday's Tour prologue.

Earlier this week, Tour organizers asked Astana to drop out of the race because of the implication of its former sports director, Manolo Saiz, in the Spanish doping affair, which centres on Madrid doctor Eufemiano Fuentes.

Saiz was arrested in May. The Spanish daily El Pais reported that 15 of the 58 riders implicated in the scandal were members of Vinokourov's team, although he himself has not been tainted by the probe.

According to the newspaper, court documents allegedly described a 'criminal network' that sold EPO, human growth hormone and anabolic steroids and operated a blood-doping operation in which riders were transfused with their own blood to increase its oxygen-carrying capacity.

If the CAS judges decide against Astana, it would become the second team to be kicked out of this year's Tour. Earlier in June race officials tossed out the Spanish Comunidad Valenciana team because of the implication of its former deputy team director in the same affair.

In addition, El Pais has named Tour top favourite Jan Ullrich in connection with the probe, reporting that labels on blood samples found with a Fuentes collaborator implicated the 1997 Tour champion and his longtime manager Rudy Pevenage.

The German rider vehemently denied any involvement. 'I have nothing to do with it,' Ullrich said through his T-Mobile team.

Tour organizers have backed the German rider, with race spokesman Philippe Sudres saying, 'For the moment, there is nothing that speaks against Ullrich participating in the Tour.'

But the allegations are likely to follow the 1997 Tour winner throughout the race.

The Spanish investigation is ongoing and could produce more revelations and, in the worst-case scenario, a repeat of the 1998 Tour de France, when only 14 of 21 teams finished the race after the Festina team was expelled for doping and six others dropped out in protest of police tactics.

The news from Spain came as French media reported that Armstrong had told doctors treating him for cancer that he had taken a variety of banned substances.

Citing sworn testimony given in a Texas court hearing by the wife of Armstrong's former best friend, cyclist Frankie Andreu, the daily Le Monde said that the retired Tour champion told doctors at Indiana Hospital in 1996 that he had taken 'EPO, growth hormones, cortisone, steroids and testosterone.'

Armstrong immediately rejected the claims, calling them 'stale, unfounded and untrue.'

However, since his retirement after last year's Tour victory, reports have repeatedly linked Armstrong with the use of illegal substances, including the alleged use of EPO during the 1999 Tour.

These media stories are certainly one reason Armstrong will not be in France to accompany the Tour, an absence that is certain to provoke much commentary.

On top of all this comes a little-noted trial in France of 23 people, including former Tour rider Laurent Roux, accused of trafficking in 'pot Belge,' a mix of amphetamines, caffeine and occasionally cocaine or heroin.

The mix was apparently widely used in French cycling; the case on trial involves 2,200 doses that were sold for about 190,000 euros (currently about 240,000 dollars).

Testifying at the Bordeaux trial, Roux denied nothing and implicated the entire sport..

'I used EPO, human growth hormone, cortisone and testosterone,' a frightening echo of what Armstrong allegedly told his doctors in 1996.

'When I became a professional in 1994 I didn't use drugs. But I was marginalized. So then I did what everybody did.'

Unfortunately for the Tour de France, the verdict in the trial will be handed down on July 3, just as the race is getting into gear. This will throw a cruel shadow over the Tour, a shadow that could haunt the riders until the race ends in Paris on July 23.