Virenque finally admits to taking banned drugs

The unthinkable has finally happened. Millions of French people who watch the Tour de France each summer now have to digest the fact that their idol Richard Virenque took banned drugs.

Having remained in denial for two years and three months since he and his Festina team were thrown off the Tour, Virenque, France's most popular cyclist and biggest Tour star of the 1990s, created a sensation here yesterday morning when he finally admitted that he had used the blood-boosting hormone erythropoietin (EPO).

At 9.15, immediately after the session opened, Virenque was called for questioning by the presiding magistrate Daniel Delegove, who had been advised by the rider's lawyer that he wished to speak. "Do you accept this reality, that you took doping products?" asked Delegove. "Yes," replied Virenque.

Under further questioning, his voice, with its brittle meridional accent, cracked and he seemed close to tears as he described why he used drugs. "It was a like a train going away from me, and if I didn't get on it I would be left behind. It was not cheating. I wanted to remain in the family."

His admission led to what will remain an enduring image of the trial, at the end of the morning session, when Virenque was reconciled with his former masseur Willy Voet, with whom he had had a "father-son" relationship that ended abruptly when Voet was caught by police. Both men were in tears as Voet clutched Virenque's arm and told him that he had done the right thing - but almost simultaneously Voet's wife Sylvie harangued the cyclist over his allegation that Voet was a drug dealer.

For Virenque, it is a bitter volte-face. During the 1998 scandal, as his team-mates confessed one by one to police that they had taken drugs, especially EPO, Virenque denied point blank that he had taken drugs, both to the police and live on French television.

In the opening session here on Monday, Virenque maintained his denial. But Delegove pointedly asked the other two men at the centre of the case - Voet and the former Festina manager Bruno Roussel - if Virenque could have been doped without his knowledge. Both were adamant that it was impossible.

Faced with this reality, Virenque decided to change his tactics on Monday evening. It is a decision that may well mean he is not found guilty of the charge he faces here, that of inciting his team-mates to take drugs, as he is now essentially in the same position as the rest of the team.

However, his career may have ended with his 19th place in Saturday's Tour of Lombardy. Despite winning a stage of this year's Tour, he is currently without a team - no sponsor wants to hire him until the outcome of the trial is known - and he faces a ban of between six months and a year, as a confession of drug use is regarded in the same light as a positive test. He said to Voet yesterday: "I'm unemployed now, and I'm glad."

There was another confession yesterday. The 1994 world champion Luc Leblanc, summoned as a witness, admitted that he had used human growth hormone and EPO while he was at Festina in 1994. Leblanc provided the day's other moment of drama when he returned to the witness stand and stated his support for another cyclist called as a witness, Christophe Bassons, who is widely known for his anti-drug stance.

Leblanc laid the blame for the doping problem at the door of the governing body, the Union Cycliste Internationale. "They are dictators; we are victims. They sit in a tower in Switzerland and make money from us, treating us like dogs, like sheep. They are hypocrites when they say now, `Oh, there's doping in cycling'. They should be here in front of you on the bench with the accused." He was warmly applauded by the gallery, reinforcing the feeling here that an entire sport is on trial.