PARIS - Former Festina team sporting director Bruno Roussel and masseur Willy Voet are appealing against suspensions of five and three years respectively from cycling.

Lawyers for the two men, caught up in the Tour de France doping scandal in July, said on Friday night they were lodging the appeals with the French Cycling Federation (FFC), whose disciplinary committee handed down the suspensions.

The FFC has not officially announced the suspensions, having simply notified both men by letter.

Roussel, who admitted in July that his team carried out organised doping, is contesting the legitimacy of the FFC to ban him rather than the sanction as such, the lawyers said.

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*THE LANCET* PLEADS FOR MODERATE TOLERANCE FOR CANNABIS.

Research leads the British weekly to pronounce the drug less dangerous than alcohol or tobacco. A committee of the House of Lords supports its use for persons at the end of life.

"IT would be reasonable to think that the cannabis is less a threat for health that alcohol and tobacco." The prestigious weekly scientific magazine The Lancet published in its last issue, dated of the 14th of November, an editorial that proposes a new approach on the debate on the legal status of this drug.

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Synthetic "recreational" illegal drugs invade European capitals.

Paris: 100 francs. London: 8 Pounds Sterling. Madrid: 2,000 pesetas:.. With such low prices in these European capitals, anybody can buy a pill of ecstasy.

Five to six times less expensive than a gram of cocaine, this hallucinogenic amphetamine symbolizes the new age of the so-called "recreational" drugs. In just a few years ecstasy has become the absolute leader of the new synthetic illegal drugs. Its production could radically change the situation of the traffic in narcotics. Anti-narcotics forces find themselves faced with a surprising situation: the drugs are manufactured in Europe (Netherlands and other nothern countries) for an international distribution, including Asia, the land of opium: A reversal of tradition, it would seem.

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THE Tour de France tried to rise above the anger and recriminations of a summer tainted by drugs scandals by announcing at the launch of the 1999 route in Paris a series of radical measures in the hope of a dope-free future. In a dramatic presentation ceremony both Jean-Marie Leblanc, the race director, and Jean-Claude Killy, president of the Tour de France, called for a new scandal-free era after the humiliation of a year when the race was nearly abandoned.

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FRENCH police seized lip conditioner, hand oil and elbow grease containing hemp seed oil from a Body Shop store - because they claim the products encourage drug use.

Body Shop founder Anita Roddick yesterday said she was "amazed" by the action of gendarmes who entered her shop in Aix-en-Provence and took products from the Hemp range, as well as promotional material.

Ms Roddick said: "You'd have to smoke a hemp joint the size of a telphone pole to get the least buzz and you'd die from carbon monoxide first.

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THE Body Shop may be prosecuted for promoting drug use after French police raided a branch of the ecologically friendly retail group in Aix-en-Provence. They seized stocks of hand lotion, lip conditioner and body oil from the company's new hemp product range, claiming that they encouraged the use of cannabis. The Body Shop products are made with industrial-grade hemp seed oil extracted from the hemp plant, which is part of the cannabis family. The oil does contain THC (tetrahydrocannabinol), the compound that provides the "high" from marijuana, but only in negligible quantities.

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Spectators Cannot Admire Champions Who Win by Fraudulent Means

PARIS---Perhaps Michelle SmithDe Bruin is guilty of tampering with her own urine samples. Perhaps not. Whatever the result of her appeal in the courts, whatever the merits of her four-year ban from swimming, international sport is unquestionably guilty.

The use of banned performance-enhancing drugs by elite athletes is clearly widespread, maybe even close to universal in some sports. For too many years and too many Olympiads, the rewards have been too great and the risk of getting caught too slight to dissuade would-be medalists.

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'The IOC and UCI might consider whether taking a substance that can correct a physiological inequality should be considered as doping'

Last week's Tour de France cycle race saw a furore about the use of epoetin (recombinant erythropoietin), which enhances packed-cell volume (PCV). The Union Cycliste Internationale allows an upper limit of PCV of 050, but JJM Marx and PCJ Vergouwen's results this week cast doubt on the validity of this cutoff. PCV values above 050 were found in three of 245 measurements in elite athletes who denied use any kind of doping and in four of 278 measurements from non-athlete controls.

The fear is that some athletes whose PCV exceeds this amount might be banned unjustly from their sport.

- --- Checked-by: Melodi Cornett

[end]

"The Tour de France: a broken legend" shrilled Le Monde's headline. "Tour de Farce" is how others put it. The field in this year's gruelling 21-day cycling race was decimated by drug raids, inquiries, and arrests by the French police, and walkouts by some of the teams. The race itself saw sit-down strikes and go-slows by the cyclists, voting with their pedals. The first raid was 3 days before the tour began, a team masseur being stopped at the France-Belgium border with a car-load of doping products, including epoetin (recombinant erythropoietin). The doping raids and inquiries then accelerated like a racing team itself, with hotel rooms searched and riders forced to give samples of urine, blood, and hair. Cyclists and team officials, including doctors, are waiting to be charged or questioned further by the French authorities.

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THE real winner of the 1998 Tour de France did not wear the yellow jersey once during the competition. She was not even riding; but from her office in the 15th arrondissement of Paris, Marie-Georqe Buffet, the Communist youth and sports minister, triumphed in her year-long battle against illegal drug use in sport.

She had said she wanted the Tour to reach its conclusion. "When a patient is ill, you do not kill him, you try to find a cure," she said. But it was her diagnosis and her decision to use the world's premier cycling race to draw attention to doping that nearly finished it off.

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The astonishing advocacy of performance-enhancing drugs in sport by Juan Antonio Samaranch, the International Olympics Committee president, highlights his successful campaign earlier this year to have cannabis added to the list of drugs prohibited for Olympic athletes. He now excepts only those "performance-enhancing drugs that may cause permanent harm to the athlete". As cannabis is neither performance-enhancing nor harmful to the individual user, just what exactly was the relevance of that ban?

GERARD MULHOLLAND CHEVILLY-LARUE, FRANCE



[end]

REIMS, France---A day after the Tour de France ended, police questioned 14 members of the TVM team.

Six cyclists, along with eight team staff members, were questioned Monday morning in Reims, northeast of Paris. Already the team director, Cees Priern, its doctor, Andrei Mikhailov, and Joahnnes Moors, a masseur, had been placed under formal investigation --- a step short of being formally charged---on doping charges.

The six riders---Jeroen Blijlevens, Steven De Jongh, Servais Knaven, Bart Voskamp, Sergei Ivanov and Sergei Outschakov---made no comment as they entered the police station.

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AIX-LES-BAINS, France---High on the first climb in the Tour de France on Wednesday, Greg LeMond was waiting to watch the race go by and trying to understand why it was more than an hour behind schedule until he was told about the two stoppages by the riders.

"I believe they're.protesting that it's gotten to be kind of a witch hunt," said the American, who won the Tour in 1986, 1989 and 1990. Now 37 years old and retired from the sport, LeMond was accompanying a 16-person tourist group that has been cycling over some of the Tour's roads before and after daily stages.

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Outraged by drug investigation, they slow pace so much Jalabert withdraws.

Officials void results.

PARIS--Dogged by an unprecedented drug scandal, the riders in the Tour de France mutinied Wednesday, slowing their pace to an amble and threatening to reduce the 1998 edition of the summer cycling classic to a fiasco.

A disgusted Laurent Jalabert, one of the world's top cyclists, withdrew from the race along with the rest of the riders from the Spanish ONCE team. Two other squads, Banesto of Spain and Riso Scotti of Italy, also threw in the towel.

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LILLE, France---Rodolfo Massi, a Tour de France cyclist with the Casino team, and Nicolas Terrados, the doctor for the ONCE team, were charged in court Friday night following a hearing before Judge Patrick Keil, who is heading one of the Tour drugs inquiries.

Both men were detained by French police Wednesday night. They have been charged under the 1989 drug act. Massi, a member of the Casino team, was the leader in the King of the Mountains category at the time of his arrest. He faces additional charges of importing, distributing and transferring "poisonous substances."

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Angry Over Hotel Raid, Riders Stage Slowdown

A1X-LES-BAINS, France --- The Tour de France, plagued by drug scandals, was stopped twice Wednesday by rider protests and faced a premature end for the first time in its 95-year history.

The riders agreed to start Thursday only if the French police modify their tactics in a spreading investigation of some of the 21 teams in the world's greatest bicycle race. Not until Jean-Marie Leblanc, the director of the race consulted with government officials and promised a change in police methods---including questioning in team hotels rather than police stations---did the riders call off their second sit-down.

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Triumph on World Cup stage forgotten as France fails the dope test International competition is getting a rough ride among both the cyclists and the grand masters.

AS CHARLES Dickens once said of another momentous period in French history: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."

There was always going to be a hangover after the revolutionary zeal of the country's World Cup victory celebrations on Bastille Day. And this summer's sporting party has been well and truly spoiled by the Tour de France, the world's greatest cycle race, which has been blighted by riders' strikes and allegations of drug-taking.

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LILLE, France---Rodolfo Massi, a Tour de France cyclist with the Casino tearn, and Nicolas Terrados, the doctor for the ONCE team, were charged in court Friday night following a hearing before Judge Patrick Keil, who is heading one of the Tour drugs inquiries.

Both men were detained by French police Wednesday night. They have been charged under the 1989 drug act. Massi, a member of the Casino team, was the leader in the King of the Mountains category at the time of his arrest. He faces additional charges of importing, distributing and transferring "poisonous substances."

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NEUCHATEL, Switzerland (AP) - After one of the most turbulent days in its history, the Tour de France lost two more teams Thursday in its growing drug scandal.

Amid the bucolic surroundings of Switzerland, the athletes couldn't escape the news that the teams withdrew to protest police behavior. Also, investigators for the first time prevented a cyclist from competing after finding drugs in his possession.

When the 18th stage was over, Tom Steels of Belgium had won, but the overall standings remained the same. Italy's Marco Pantani retained the yellow jersey, Bobby Julich of the United States was second, and last year's winner, Jan Ullrich of Germany, was third.

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THE Tour de France, teetering on the verge of collapse because of a major doping scandal, should make it to Sunday's finish in Paris after police stemmed their investigations.

Tour director Jean-Marie Leblanc said yesterday that he was confident the Tour would be completed.

"All together, we are going to complete this Tour, like 84 previous Tours were completed," he said on the event's internal radio channel, Radio Tour, at the start of the 18th stage from Aix-les-Bains to Neuchatel, in Switzerland.

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