The biggest doping case in the history of the Tour de France is about to break out when on July 8, 1998, just 25 years ago, Willy Voet, a healer of the Festina team, is intercepted by the police with a cargo of doping products.
While the men of Aimé Jacquet concentrate all the eyes at the dawn of their World Cup semi-final against Croatia, a first thunderclap resonates in France when Willy Voet, healer at the Festina team, is arrested behind the wheel of her Fiat in the colors of Festina at 5:40 am by customs officers near the Belgian border. The Tour de France must start three days later from Dublin, Ireland, and the biggest scandal in the history of the big loop is in the process of bursting.
Because in the vehicle trunk, customs officials discover a real gold mine with no less than four hundred bottles of doping and narcotic products (235 EPO bulbs, 120 amphetamine capsules, 82 growth hormone solutions, 60 testosterone bottles, corticosteroids and amphetamines) contained in isothermal bags. For some, this customs control was in no way unexpected but consecutive to a denunciation of a sports director of a competing team.
And Willy Voet confess …
Placed in police custody, Willy Voet will long deny the facts before confessing after three days, recognizing a medical doping within the formation of Richard Virenque. The Festina case can break out.
She will lead, on July 17, to the exclusion of the team after her manager, Bruno Roussel, in turn admits “an organized doping system”, then, two years later, on a trial at the end of which Willy Voet will be sentenced to 10 months in prison suspended and 30,000 francs fine and Bruno Roussel to a year in prison and 50,000 francs.
Richard Virenque, the only runner prosecuted and who recognized for the first time that she had used prohibited substances on October 24, 2000 during this trial after having always denied the facts, is, he, his, will be released by nine months of suspension.
