A TVM masseur was held in custody and 14 of the Dutch team's riders and officials were questioned by police yesterday as the probe into the Tour de France doping scandal gathered momentum.
The masseur, Johannes Moors, was detained on suspicion of possessing harmful substances and breaking France's anti-doping and customs laws. TVM's director, Cees Priem, and doctor Andrei Mikhailov were detained last week for the same reason.
Reims police questioned 14 team members, including six riders, for more than seven hours to try to get to the root of the doping networks revealed by recent raids at team hotels.
The riders - Jeroen Blijlevens, Steven De Jongh, Servais Knaven, Bart Voskamp, Sergei Ivanov and Sergei Outschankov - and officials looked relaxed as one-by-one they were allowed out of the town's main police station.
"The questionings were carried out in a good atmosphere," TVM manager Guido Van Cluster told journalists. In an interview with the newspaper Le Monde, the French sports minister, Marie-George Buffet, said she decided to crack down on illicit substances in sport last year when she took office and realised that doping "was no longer just a cottage industry".
"What was missing for a long time in the fight against doping was a strong political will to do it," said Buffet, one of the Communists in the left-wing coalition which came to power in June 1997.
The TVM riders were called to testify after two police raids on their hotels during the three-week Tour produced evidence the team was using illicit doping products. The second raid, in Albertville last Tuesday, ended with the riders being taken off to a local hospital for tests on their urine, blood and hair. The riders later quit the Tour in protest.
Under French law, riders are not prosecuted unless they contribute to a fund for the purchase of drugs or sell them to other riders. This is the charge faced by Italian Rodolfo Massi, who last week became the first rider placed under investigation on suspicion of dealing in banned substances.
A new, tougher law on doping will be examined by France's lower house of parliament, the National Assembly, when it reconvenes next month. Festina riders Laurent Dufaux, Armin Meier and Alex Zuelle will return to racing today despite their disqualification from the Tour. The Swiss trio will compete in the A Travers Lausanne, a two-stage time trial around the home of the International Olympic Committee, which hosts a doping crisis meeting later this month.
ONCE team doctor Nicolas Terrados, who has also been placed under investigation by the French authorities, protested his innocence at a press conference in Spain. Accused of facilitating the use of doping substances, he insisted: "I've never done anything to jeopardise the health of my sportsmen, that has always been the case throughout my career."
Terrados declared that over several years he had lead research so that cyclists would not have to resort to drugs. "How can anyone think that I am going to use them?" he asked.
Meanwhile, Stephen Roche, who won the Tour in 1987, said yesterday that he believes cycling is "probably the cleanest sport of all".
"I am very concerned because it is my sport, and I think it is unfortunate," said Roche, "but drugs are a sports problem, not strictly a cycling problem, and I think in the last few years cycling has done a lot to cleanse itself. It's probably the cleanest sport of all, believe it or not.
"Two years ago, cycling was the first body to come forward with blood samples while other sports were actually ignoring it, saying, `No, no, no, we don't want to do it'," Roche told BBC Radio.
"Cycling and the Tour de France have always been full of drama and fireworks. This year, of course, there was more drama than fireworks, but I think cycling will pick itself up."
The International Cycling Union (UCI) is to meet a group of selected cyclists in Lausanne early next week to discuss the doping issues. The discussion will follow a meeting between the UCI and race organisers and team management in Paris on Thursday. Any measures agreed upon could be implemented without having to wait for the usual rubberstamping.
