Richard Virenque continued his fight to protect his name and career yesterday after the judge investigating drug-taking in the Festina team told him that tests showed he had used banned drugs.
The Frenchman has maintained his innocence since July 8th when French customs officers on the Belgian border impounded a Festina car conveying a supply of steroids, growth hormone and the blood-boosting erithropoietin (EPO) destined for the Tour de France.
Virenque's personal masseur and team manager maintain in their testimonies that they supplied and injected him with drugs. But yesterday the rider seemed not to believe the evidence presented by Judge Patrick Keil.
"All the biological parameters and tests prove scientifically that I am not doped," Virenque said after leaving the judge's office in Lille. He added that the report "reveals no trace of steroids, growth hormone, corticoids, amphetamines or masking products".
Two other Festina riders, former world champion Laurent Brochard and Pascal Herve, were also told by Keil they had failed the drug tests. The three had filed a petition to have access to his report.
Nine Festina riders underwent tests which revealed traces of steroids, corticoids, growth hormone and amphetamins for some of the riders and, for all nine, the banned hormone erythropoietin (EPO).
All the Festina riders, who were kicked out of the Tour de France after their coach, Bruno Roussel, confessed organising doping in the team, later admitted taking EPO, except Virenque and Herve.
The report merely confirmed what the riders had already said, though Virenque continued to offer a very different reading of the figures.
Virenque's defence in the continuing investigation rests partly on the fact that his blood-solid (haematocrit) level was just below the 50 per cent limit which the International Cycling Union (UCI) considers healthy. A high haematocrit level can indicate the use of EPO.
One of the report's authors, Dr Francois Bressolle, pointed out that Virenque's level of 49.3 per cent was still far higher than the average of 42-44 per cent.
Bressolle maintained that additional scientific evidence, based on the level of a protein, transferin, proved Virenque had taken EPO. But Virenque is adamant that the report and the investigation are a plot to destroy him.
"If you are objective, you will take into account the undeniable biological parameters which prove I'm innocent," he said. "But if you want to bring me down, then you will take into account the biased interpretation.
"Today I'm relieved. I'm sure this is the end of a nightmare."
But it may instead prove to be the end of his career. Virenque has been sacked by Festina and his only serious option for next year, the Italo-Belgian team sponsored by the Mapei chemicals company, depends on him being "clean".
Yesterday's findings will fuel further unease during a year in which the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has been forced to convene a special drugs conference, to be held next February.
Drugs have been rarely out of the headlines during 1998 with the past fortnight proving no exception.
In Monaco, German athletics chief Helmut Diegel formally proposed scrapping all the world records at the turn of the century in a tacit admission that many of the marks are drug tainted.
During the same weekend, the sport's governing body confirmed its arbitration panel would consider the case of former American golden girl Mary Slaney, who tested positive two years ago for excessive amounts of the male hormone testosterone.
British swimmer Sharron Davies, who finished second in the 400 metres individual medley at the 1980 Moscow Olympics, demanded the gold medal after a confession from East Germany's winner Petra Schneider that she had taken steroids in a state-controlled doping programme.
Diego Maradona, kicked out of the 1994 World Cup after testing positive for a cocktail of drugs, was questioned for more than two hours in Turin on Saturday by a judge investigating allegations of drug-taking in Italian soccer.
And the Welsh Rugby Union said it would investigate allegations from former Wales and British Lions fullback JPR Williams that professional rugby players were now using steroids.
Even baseball, which enjoyed a golden season in the United States, has not been immune in a troubling year.
Mark McGwire, who shattered Roger Maris's 1961 record for home runs, with 70 homers, was aided by the steroid androstenedione, a substance banned by the IOC but permitted in major league baseball.
The Tour de France, though, has been the catalyst which spurred the IOC to convene an unprecedented meeting less than two years before the Sydney Olympics, the first global sporting festival of the new millennium.
Now Kiel has delivered the most damning independent condemnation of a major sport since the Dubin inquiry in Canada nine years ago discovered evidence of rampant drug use in track and field.
Charles Dubin, an associate chief justice of the Ontario Supreme Court, was commissioned to examine drug taking in Canadian sport after Ben Johnson tested positive for the anabolic steroid stanozolol after winning the 1988 Seoul Olympic 100 metres final.
Johnson and his coach Charlie Francis freely confessed to using a drug programme since 1981 in a hearing which still haunts the sport.
