Richard Virenque - Post-trial Reaction

Post-trial Reaction

"For sheer effrontery, Virenque's denial for over two years that he had knowingly taken drugs, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, took some beating."

Virenque was criticised by the media and satirists for his denial in the face of increasing evidence and his pretence of having been doped without his knowledge. Voet wrote in Le Journal du Dimanche that he preferred Virenque as a young pro "because he didn't dope himself much". Many former colleagues shunned him, remembering his arrogance and criticism, but his agent, Eric Boyer, later manager of the Cofidis team, said:

"He shouldn't have had to pay for the lack of awareness of previous generations, mine and those which preceded it. It was too easy. He became the symbol of doping in cycling but he did only what the others did. He suffered for all that had gone before . He deserved to be sanctioned severely, and he was. There shouldn't be more than that. In my opinion the Festina affair was just the outcome of what had been going on for many years. Richard walked into it willingly. Nobody made him. He was looking to improve his performances. But he shouldn't have to pay for three or four generations of cycling that did nothing about it."

Virenque's mother, Bérangère, said:

" weeps, he speaks. It's his strength and his weakness. I was afraid that he would do the worst thing, because he is hypersensitive. I saw him defeated. The way others look at him is important to him. When I heard people in the crowd shout 'doper', I hated it... I thought of all the sacrifices that he made when he was very young, like when he was a kid and he was dropped in a race and that he went off like a mad dog, on impulse. When in the middle of it all he came back to Carqueiranne, he was in his garage and I took him in my arms. He cried from morning to night. Why did it take him so long to confess it to us, to talk to us? I don't know. I told him: 'Be brave, son. Whatever you do, think of your children. It's they who will live on after you.'"

Virenque lived near Geneva in Switzerland and the Swiss cycling association suspended him for nine months. The president of the committee which imposed the ban, Bernard Welten, said he deserved a severe penalty because he was one of the biggest drug-takers in the team. The president of the French federation, Daniel Baal, said nine months was halfway between the minimum penalty of six months and the maximum of a year for a first-time offence. The sentence was reduced by an independent tribunal to six and a half. He was fined the equivalent of 2,600 euros and told to pay 1,300 euros in costs. He became depressed. "I had to realise that I wasn't anything any more," he said. His wife Stéphanie said he put on two sizes in clothes and 10 kg more than his racing weight. He wept repeatedly. She said she would stay with him and support him only if they moved back in the south of France after four years in Switzerland.

In the meantime they had the help of a prominent neighbour, Laurent Jalabert. The two had not been friends and did not see each other much in Switzerland. Then, Jalabert opened links by getting his wife, Sylvie, to ask Stéphanie Virenque for the loan of a vacuum cleaner that she didn't actually need. Jalabert said that later, "Richard called me one day when my wife and I were getting ready to move house. He was desperate to help us even though we didn't really need any help. It was then that I realised his distress. He spent the whole day taking the furniture apart and putting it back together again. It's odd, but that day did him an awful lot of good." Jalabert and his wife Sylvie said that, as a souvenir, they had kept the doors of one of their closets upside down because that was the way Virenque had fitted them.

The two men began training together. When Virenque retired Jalabert wrote in an open letter:

"We used to go out every day at 10am, because you're not much of a morning person. There was a time in our career, you know like me, Richard, when were a bit cold to each other. We were rivals, we were chasing the same objectives and the press set us up against each other.
When we trained together was when I found out who you were, someone who's good deep down. Close to people, with a good heart as well. You told me you missed the sun of the south, and your friends. It seemed to you that everybody had abandoned you. You had the air of suffering, of needing to confide in someone. That hurt me to see you like that, you with your fame, to have fallen so far. A sort of complicity began between us. Afterwards, in 2002, we had a good battle for the polkadot jersey. That embarrassed me, to fight against you, but it was the same for you."

Virenque and his family moved back to France as his wife asked. Jalabert followed shortly after his own career ended.