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Tour de France News for June 29, 2003

Edited by Chris Henry

One Tour spot left in Saeco

There is still one place to be filled in the Saeco Tour de France team, with eight riders now being confirmed. The health problems of Stefano Zanini (knee and back problems) and Salvatore Commesso (lower back) have not prevented them from making the team, and they will take their places alongside team captain Gilberto Simoni, who will be the sole leader for the GC.

The Saeco team will also take Paolo Fornaciari, Fabio Sacchi for the flats, and Gerrit Glomser and Leonardo Bertagnolli for the mountains. Danilo Di Luca, who is back after breaking his collarbone, and Salvatore Commesso will also help Simoni but they will also try to get in the breaks for stage wins.

The final rider will be decided on Monday, out of Andrea Tonti, Ivan Quaranta and Joerg Ludewig.

Santoni still fuming

Domina Vacanze-Elitron manager Vincenzo Santoni continues to voice his outrage at the exclusion of his team from the Tour de France. A UCI arbitration panel rejected the team's appeal of the Société du Tour de France's decision Friday, ruling that the Tour de France organisers had acted within the appropriate sporting criteria with their decision. Santoni, however, fervently disagrees.

"The arbitration by the UCI, which confirmed Cipollini's exclusion, is proof once again of the power and influence that governs cycling," he commented. "The reasons they gave us were ridiculous. We have won 14 stage victories in two years at the Giro and the Vuelta. It's imperative that we act and balance the relationships between riders, organisers, and teams."

For his part, Tour de France director Jean-Marie Leblanc was satisfied with the decision. "We were sure of our decision, resting strictly on the regulations," Leblanc told l'Equipe. "There was one choice to make, and we've settled it."

Scars from the Festina affair

In an interview with French sports paper l'Equipe in May, published in Saturday's edition, Laurent Brochard (Ag2R-Prévoyance) revealed the lasting impact of the Festina affair of 1998, and the enduring ripples in the professional peloton. Brochard sat down with 23 year old Jérôme Pineau (Brioches La Boulangère) to discuss what he considers to be a lack of solidarity within the peloton, and just how the doping scandals that have rocked the sport have affected him.

"When I began cycling I was withdrawn, alone, that was my nature," Brochard explained. "With Festina I was finally starting to trust other people and I took everything in my head. Now, I've closed up again. I won't open my heart any more to people in cycling."

Brochard, who says the problem of doping was something he "did not see coming head on," described an underhanded system of doping which, while not absolving himself of responsibility, led to his involvement in the Festina affair. At the same time, the former world champion showed no interest in becoming the voice of the French peloton, even if open discussion has been a major part of the healing process since then. "It's not possible for me to become the spokesman for the others," he said. "That doesn't interest me."

Pineau, an emerging talent in French cycling, was an amateur at the time of the Festina affair, and explained how he was touched by the events, even as he became a teammate of Didier Rous, also a member of the Festina team in 1998.

"Frankly, I had a negative reaction when I learned Didier Rous was joining Bonjour," Pineau said. "For me, he cheated. But I discovered that the Festina affair went back a long way, and that those riders weren't doping any more than others. I talked a lot with Didier, he told me how it came to pass that he started doping, and it's terrible, but I realised that if I had been riding at that time I would likely have done the same thing. I'm glad now that I'm ten years younger."

At 35, Brochard has joined the ranks of the old guard in cycling, while Pineau is among the younger generation emerging after the turning point of the 1998 Festina scandal, but in a changed peloton, where suspicion may be a common denominator, but where the problem of doping has not been eradicated. The two riders each demonstrated their own reservations about the sport, and the comportment of those involved.

"Cycling is such a small world that everyone talks, and everyone thinks they know everything," Pineau concluded. "These scandals have just amplified the bad aspects. Everything is suspect, and from the outside everyone thinks that nothing has changed. But cycling is also responsible for the doubts that hang over it."

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