As France celebrated a World Cup win 20 years ago, a drugs scandal broke that almost killed the race

The echoes are everywhere. In July 1998, as an irresistible French football team closed on World Cup victory, the Grand Départ of that year’s Tour de France was overshadowed by a fast-developing doping controversy. In Ireland, where the peloton was gathering for the Tour’s start, there was fear and loathing in the air.

What was at first a whisper eventually became a scream as the controversy exploded into the Festina Affair. The revelation of widespread doping throughout cycling accelerated the founding of Wada, the world anti-doping body. The Festina scandal began when Willy Voet, the personal soigneur — they now call them carers — to French cycling’s top star, Richard Virenque, then leader of Festina, the world’s top team, was pulled over on the Franco-Belgian border as he drove towards the Channel ports.

There were enough performance-enhancing drugs in the boot of Voet’s car to fuel an army of Ibizan ravers, all summer long. Initially Virenque and his Festina teammates denied all knowledge of doping, as did the Tour’s own director, Jean-Marie Leblanc.

It was an isolated incident, said Leblanc dismissively, a one-off renegade event and nothing to do with the Tour itself. Yet this was untrue. The Festina team in fact ran a meticulously orchestrated doping programme, financed by the riders themselves. Within a week of the Dublin start, after police raids, arrests, and searches of vehicles and hotel rooms, the Festina team had been kicked off the race and the 1998 Tour was falling apart.

There is no doubt that, 20 years after Festina, Chris Froome’s presence on the Vendée start line this year, despite being cleared by the UCI’s anti-doping investigation, is going to stir up bad memories. The French are short of faith when it comes to cycling. They have not forgotten Festina, nor have they forgotten the many scandals that followed. Virenque long maintained his innocence of any wrongdoing.

The Festina scandal finally came to a head in la France profonde, in a shabby bar-tabac, Chez Gillou, in the Correze. In a cramped back-room, Virenque and his teammates tearfully protested their innocence as they were kicked off the race. Virenque finally confessed to doping in October 2000.

The former International Cycling Union (UCI) president Pat McQuaid, was director of the Dublin Grand Départ. “Forty-eight hours before the Tour started, when Voet was arrested, Jean-Marie Leblanc called us into a meeting and said: ‘I’ve got some bad news …’

“He said he would do his best to keep a lid on it until the race got back to France. He was as good as his word and once the race got to France, the shit really hit the fan.”

A flood of doping revelations emerged and the Tour became a nightmare for the race organisers as police intervention intensified. “There was no end to it,” McQuaid said. “Police raids, sit-down protests, walkouts. A total nightmare.”

Leblanc says now that he was powerless. “We’d hear a story on the news each morning about the cops raiding one team or another,” he said, “going through their hotel rooms, seizing products and accusing a rider of doping.”

By the time the convoy reached the Alps the Tour had become an embarrassment. The Spanish teams and media stormed out in protest at the police raids, fans mooned and jeered at the riders as they rode past, and French newspaper Le Monde called for the Tour to be scrapped for good.

Leblanc, meanwhile, punch drunk and out of his depth, remained in denial. “Contrary to what some intellectuals and Paris newspapers suggest, the Tour must continue,” he said. “The public is still loyal.”

Finally, at the stage start in Albertville, the Tour teetered on the brink of complete collapse as the remaining riders again went on strike. Only after assurances of no further police raids or arrests on the riders themselves did they agree to start.

“If the stage hadn’t taken place,” Leblanc said, “the Tour would have been stopped. If it had, I think it would have struggled to continue, because the loss of confidence among our sponsors would have been crippling.”

Of the 189 starters only 98 made it to the French capital and the Champs Élysées. The race winner, Marco Pantani, already winner of that year’s Giro d’Italia, seemingly oblivious to the funereal atmosphere, dyed his goatee yellow in celebration.

Virenque, still protesting his innocence, came back to the Tour the following year, when Lance Armstrong took the first of his seven wins, in a race that was, laughably, called the “Tour of Renewal”.

“They said I wasn’t welcome on the 1999 Tour because I was the ‘incarnation of doping,’” Virenque said. “And that was at the start of the Armstrong era!”

There were other long-term consequences of Festina. French cycling slipped into a sustained depression, with several key races lost due to lack of investment, and sponsors drifting away. There has not been a homegrown Tour de France champion since Bernard Hinault in 1985.

With the Froome controversy set to overshadow the Grand Départ of this year’s race, how much has really changed in 20 years? Can cycling really claim to have recovered from the crisis in credibility that brought the 1998 Tour to its knees and threatened its very existence?

Froome has vehemently protested his innocence throughout and acknowledged on Monday the saga’s effects on cycling’s perception among the public. “I appreciate more than anyone else the frustration at how long the case has taken to resolve and the uncertainty this has caused,” he said. “I am glad it’s finally over. It means we can all move on and focus on the Tour de France.”

But despite being free to race Froome is not wanted by many at this year’s Tour, both because of his team’s unrelenting domination and because of the continuing scepticism towards his performances. Some of this stems from chauvinism, but much also flows from the string of deceits that began 20 years ago with Festina.

When the French look at Froome many see the latest in a long line of suspicious foreigners who, since the traumas of 1998, have exploited the fragility of the once-proud French scene and made the Tour their own. He may have been cleared by cycling’s governing body, but there’s little doubt that Froome is in for a rough ride.

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