Twenty years ago, the Tour de France was vaunted by the organisers as 'The Tour of Renewal'. It was 12 months after the Festina doping affair had almost brought the race to its knees, but hopes for a new dawn were made a mockery of as failed doping tests were covered up, clean riders were vilified, and speeds were faster than ever.
In the latest feature in Cyclingnews' annual countdown to the Tour de France, Jean-François Quénet, who covered the 1999 Tour with a sceptical view of Lance Armstrong, recalls a farcical three weeks.
It started with a dispute between ASO and the UCI. 17 days prior to the start in Le Puy-du-Fou in the Vendée province, race director Jean-Marie Leblanc and ASO president Jean-Claude Killy rejected the participation of the TVM team and a few individuals like Richard Virenque and Manolo Saiz, who were considered troublemakers and harmful to the image of the Tour de France.
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However, three days before the prologue, the UCI instructed the organisers to reinstate Virenque and Saiz, who had made an appeal because the rule of a 30-day limit to enter participants hadn’t been respected by ASO. At the time, wildcards were given after the Critérium du Dauphiné and that rule was hardly respected by any organizers or teams but Leblanc declared himself “legalist” and didn’t argue. His morning run together with UCI president Hein Verbruggen was widely commented upon.
Love him or hate him - there wasn't much room for moderation - Virenque was at the centre of attention but there was no previous winner of the Tour de France on the start list; Bjarne Riis and Jan Ullrich were injured and Marco Pantani was in no mood to ride after being expelled from the Giro d'Italia for failing a haematocrit test. There was no five-star favourite but on the morning of the race, L’Équipe rated Lance Armstrong at four stars along with Abraham Olaño. The American was surely the hot favourite for the prologue, having won short time trials at Circuit de la Sarthe and the Dauphiné, it was just not sure how well he’d go in the mountains.
As Alex Zülle, riding for Banesto, crashed on the Passage du Gois – the road from the Noirmoutier island that floods with the tide – Saiz urged his ONCE team to pull as an act of revenge one year after the Swiss rider [a member of the Festina team in 1998] told the French police that doping was also a common practice at ONCE, his former team.
Monsieur Propre
Corticoids and tear gas
You can read more at Cyclingnews.com
via Cyclingnews Latest Interviews and Features http://www.cyclingnews.com/features/1999-tour-de-france-the-farce-of-renewal
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