A haul of performance-enhancing substances raises questions about the biggest event in world cycling

By ROD USHER

he Tour de France was the idea of a young journalist, Geo Lefevre, who, back in 1903, reckoned a good bicycle road race would be just the thing to boost newspaper sales when they slacken during the summer holidays. This week, as the world's best riders continue their surge across France in the 85th running of the Tour, Lefevre is being proved right yet again. The premiere cycling event--with more status for the French than the football World Cup they have just won--is increasing circulations, but this time because of a word that doesn't belong with pedals or gears or guts. It's the ugliest one in any sport: drugs.

As the race was getting underway in Ireland, the masseur of the strongest team in this Tour, Festina, was arrested on the French-Belgian border. Police say they found in Willy Voet's official team car 235 doses of EPO, or erythropoietin, a blood-thickening agent; 82 doses of growth hormones, most of them testosterone, plus other drugs that can mask the presence of prohibited substances in athletes. The investigation then engulfed other members of the Festina technical team. Doctor Eric Ryckaert and director Bruno Roussel were arrested last Wednesday. Tour talk is no longer what it should be: the thunder thighs of Italian sprinter Mario Cipollini, the eternally unlucky Englishman Chris Boardman--now home recovering from another bad fall--or the chances of Germany's Jan Ullrich repeating last year's devastating win. Instead, it is about how widespread doping might be in cycling; what the sport's authorities have or have not done to control it; whether or not huge sponsorships and abuse of sports science have polluted a noble art.

Voet is reported to have first told police that any drugs they found were for personal use. But even if he'd suffered from galloping anemia (the main medical use for EPO) or Lilliputian stature, it is implausible that one man could require so much artificial thickener or hormone. Then on Friday, when Roussel stated through his lawyers that "the object was to optimize performance under strict medical control in order to avoid cyclists personally and uncontrollably supplying themselves," the Tour director Jean-Marie Leblanc took the step of excluding the Festina team from the competition. He stressed that he was doing so not to pre-empt a judicial enquiry, but to protect the Tour from scandal. "It seems to me that the sports ethic, the morality of the Tour, are the most important things," he said.

The doctor, Ryckaert, and the cyclists themselves continued to deny any wrongdoing. "I never took any EPO or any other prohibitive products," said Pascal Herve from Varetz where the team was staying after Friday's sixth stage. And his team leader, Richard Virenque, argued that the expulsion had nothing to do with the riders and that they would continue to compete despite it. At the start of the race the previous Saturday, all 53 members of the Tour had tested negative for doping in blood tests, but Leblanc maintained that although there was nothing he could do to stop the Festina cyclists riding, "we won't take their timings into account at the finish line."

Miguel Moreno, a Spaniard called in to deputize for Roussel said of the Tour and its participants: "Here, nobody can go to their first communion dressed in white." His remark was read by some as an acknowledgment of the use of drugs such as EPO--which allows the blood to take up more oxygen, giving users an obvious heart-start on their rivals. EPO shows in blood tests, but not in urine.

Paris-based sports medicine doctor Guy Zerhat, who worked with the Bic cycling team in the 1970s, said on Friday, "Back then, 95% of riders on the circuit were doping, but the methods and drugs were rustic compared to now." Of the present case Zerhat says, "What we are seeing is the hope that Festina officials will be sacrificed as scapegoats for the sport, and that the scandal ends there. They know it would be terrible if it went further, since doping is so standard in the sport."

Of course such generalizations are unfair to cyclists who are "clean" and to officials, like Leblanc, who don't condone drug use. And Zerhat himself says much of the blame lies with sports fans. "The public also has to be straightened out on this," he says. "For things to change, fans are going to have to get used to the idea of clean, honest cyclists riding a little slower and racing a little less often. People don't realize the life-threatening risks of doping."

In the 1903 Tour there were only six stages, with long rest periods between them. The winner, Maurice Garin, averaged a bit under 26 km/h on a clunky old bike. The athlete who wins this Tour will have had hardly any rest during its 22 stages and will have averaged roughly double Garin's speed on a high-tech machine. But another indicator of how the Tour has changed can be seen in the fan with the long beard who again this year can be seen jumping up and down at the roadside, screaming encouragement as riders blur past. He is dressed in horns and a flame-red cape. Investigation might reveal that he has a large number of souls in his pocket.

--With Reporting by Bruce Crumley /Paris