“It was a step backwards”: the former French Minister of Sports Marie-George Buffet admitted that her services had stopped unannounced anti-doping controls on the Blues before the 1998 World Cup, after a first control which had caused an outcry, which she had denied in the past, according to her remarks broadcast Monday by BFMTV.
In this documentary entitled “Zidane, the making of a legend”, dedicated to the new coach of the Blues and former world champion in 1998, the former minister of the Jospin government (1997-2002) returns to the controversy caused by an unexpected control of French players during a training course in Tignes in 1997.
The players, their coach Aimé Jacquet and the French federation had criticized these controls, accused of hindering the preparation of the Blues. All urine tests were negative.
Questioned in the documentary, Alain Garnier, the former doctor sent to Tignes by the Ministry of Sports to carry out the checks, reports that Ms. Buffet had confirmed the instructions to him: “I should no longer bother the Blues until the World Cup”. “Clearly, no more unannounced checks” he declares, an instruction which according to him only existed orally.
“If Dr. Garnier says it, yes, it is because it was true,” declared the former minister in response, without remembering exactly what was said to the doctor. “We didn’t say it like that, but it comes down to the same thing. It was a setback (in the fight against doping).”
“And after (the World Cup), we resumed the fight (anti-doping)” adds Ms. Buffet who, in 1999, was at the origin of the first law organizing the fight against doping in France.
“We had to pass the instructions to the cabinet level,” she says, when asked about the origin of this decision to no longer control the French players, which according to Mr. Garnier came from Matignon.
Marie-George Buffet, who declared having suffered pressure “of all kinds” during this period, had until now denied having given instructions to stop the unannounced checks. “We have never given a directive to this effect,” she declared under oath before a Senate committee in 2013.
