The year in which the 1998 Tour de France took place marked the moment when cycling was fundamentally shattered by doping revelations. Paradoxically no riders were caught failing drug tests by any of the ordinary doping controls in place at the time. Nevertheless, several police searches and interrogations managed to prove existence of organized doping at the two teams Festina and TVM, who consequently had to withdraw from the race. After stage 16, the police also forced the virtual mountain jersey holder Rodolfo Massi to leave the race, due to having found illegal corticosteroids in his hotel room. The intensive police work then led to a peloton strike at stage 17, with a fallout of four Spanish teams and one Italian team deciding to leave the race in protest.

Many years later, retrospective tests and rider confessions confirmed the common suspicion that consumption of EPO had not been limited to those being caught by the police, but in fact was something the majority of the peloton had used at this point of time.

Police investigations and arrests

Three days ahead of the Tour start, the masseur of Team Festina, Willy Voet, was found at the Belgian border to have his car full of large quantities of syringes and controlled substances, including narcotics, erythropoietin (EPO), growth hormones, testosterone and amphetamines. When raiding the Festina headquarters in France, the police also found a document with systematic drug programmes for the Festina riders. As the Tour had started in Ireland, the French police waited to the first stage in France before arresting the Festina Team's directeur sportif and doctor: Bruno Roussel and Eric Rijckaert. Faced by the evidence, Roussel and Rijckaert soon confessed, leading to all nine Festina riders (incl. notable riders such as 1997 runner-up Richard Virenque, Alex Zülle and Christophe Moreau), being forced to withdraw after stage 6.

At the first rest day, after stage 11, the Festina affair got extended, with several other teams being searched by the police, and a second police investigation leading to long interrogations of TVM riders and imprisonment of the three TVM staffs: Cees Priem (manager), Andrei Mikhailov (doctor) and Jan Moors (soigneur). As a reaction to the treatment by the French police, the peloton staged a solidarity sit-down protest both during stage 12 and stage 17. The Tour directors later nullified the results of stage 17, as the peloton in a gesture had let all TVM-riders pass the finish line a couple of seconds ahead of the peloton. All four Spanish teams (ONCE, Banesto, Vitalicio Seguros, Kelme) and one Italian team (Riso Scotti) even decided to pull out of the race, at the urging of the ONCE team, led by the French National Champion Laurent Jalabert. After the stage, the police due to a suspicion of organized doping also at other teams, decided to search their hotels and arrested rider Rodolfo Massi (Casino) and the two team managers Marc Madiot (Française des Jeux) and Vincent Lavenu (Casino). Massi was at this point of time nr.7 in the GC and wearing the mountain jersey, but had to leave the race due to the police finding illegal corticosteroids in his hotel room. He was also charged by the police for having sold EPO and other medicines to some riders in the peloton, as Voet had named him as one of his "business relationships", but this criminal charge was later dropped — due to no additional proof found by police. The Italian Olympic Committee subsequently only banned him six months for doping possession.

After stage 17, all the six remaining TVM-riders in the race were escorted by the police to the nearest hospital, for submission of samples to an extra judicial ordered doping control. One day later, the TVM team decided also collectively to withdraw from the race, and thus became the final 7th team to withdraw.

Festina riders tested by police

According to the doping test analysis result for the nine Festina riders, with samples withdrawn by police on 23 July 1998, the following doping substances had been detected:Jean-Pierre Mondenard, Dictionnaire du dopage, Masson-Paris, 2004, , p.485 Richard Virenque (EPO). Alex Zülle (EPO). Laurent Dufaux (EPO). Armin Meier (EPO). Neil Stephens (EPO). Pascal Hervé (EPO and amphetamines). Laurent Brochard (EPO and amphetamines). Didier Rous (EPO and amphetamines). Christophe Moreau (EPO* and amphetamines) *NB: His EPO-test was inconclusive, but he admitted also using EPO. Not all of the nine Festina-riders immediately confessed. While the first seven riders all opted to admit using performance-enhancing drugs when confronted with their failed test results in November 1998, the last two riders Virenque and Herve continued to maintain their innocence, until they in October 2000 finally admitted during the final court proceedings. All riders with failed tests were punished with a half-year suspension, except Neil Stephens, who escaped a sanction by choosing to retire.

TVM riders tested by police

In the TVM investigation, the police did not limit the extra doping test for samples withdrawn 29 July of the six remaining TVM-riders in the race (Jeroen Blijlevens, Bart Voskamp, Servais Knaven, Steven de Jongh, Serguei Outschakov and Sergei Ivanov). On 20 August 1998 they also called in these seven riders for interrogation and submission of samples for additional doping control: Michel Lafis, Tristan Hoffman, Hendrik Van Dijck, Peter Van Petegem, Laurent Roux, Johan Capiot and Lars Michaelsen. As one of these riders, it was either Capiot or Michaelsen, refused to submit samples, the total number of tested TVM riders was 12. In May 2001, during the final court hearing in the TVM trial, the medical expert witnesses stated, that from this tested group the test results had proofed, that the following six were "very likely" to have injected the specified doping substances: Jeroen Blijlevens (EPO and corticosteroids). Bart Voskamp (EPO and corticosteroids). Serguei Outschakov (EPO and corticosteroids). Servais Knaven (EPO). Laurent Roux (amphetamines, corticosteroids and cannabis). Tristan Hoffman (amphetamines). *NB: Did not race in the 1998 Tour de France. All of the six riders who failed drug tests, refused in court ever to have used doping. The court however found sufficient amount of evidence had been presented (104 EPO vials seized from a TVM-car in March 1998, syringes with EPO remainings found in dustbins located in TVM rented hotel rooms during the Tour de France, as well as other doping products seized from TVM's Tour bus), to conclude that organized doping at the TVM team was conducted in the preparation and during the 1998 Tour de France. Consequently, the court handed out suspended sentences from 6–18 months to the team's manager, sports director and soigneur. For unknown reasons, none of the six riders with failed tests had their cases evaluated by a sports court, and thus none of them ever received suspensions for their failed tests.

Later confessions of the nine TVM-riders in the 1998 Tour de France: Laurent Roux subsequently also failed tests for amphetamines twice, in April 1999 and April 2002, and for the second offence he got a four-year suspension. In June 2006 he confessed at a doping trial in Bordeaux, that while being suspended he had both consumed and sold the drug known in the peloton as "pot Belge" (a mixture of amphetamines, caffeine, and cocaine/heroin), and he also confessed, that throughout his active career from 1994 to 2002 he had used EPO, human growth hormone, cortisone and testosterone. Steven de Jongh, admitted using EPO "on a few occasions" in 1998–2000. When UCI introduced the EPO-test in April 2001, he decided to compete clean in the rest of his career. Jeroen Blijlevens confessed in 2013, after the publication of results from a retrospective EPO-test, to have used this drug in the 1997 and 1998 edition of the Tour.

Retrospective EPO test

At the time of the race there was no official test for EPO. In 2004, 60 remaining antidoping samples given by riders during the 1998 Tour, were tested retrospectively for recombinant EPO by using three recently developed detection methods. More precisely the laboratory compared the result of test method A: "Autoradiography — visual inspection of light emitted from a strip displaying the isoelectric profile for EPO" (published in the Nature journal as the first EPO detection method in June 2000), with the result of test method B: "Percentage of basic isoforms — using an ultra-sensitive camera that by percentage quantify the light intensity emitted from each of the isoelectric bands" (pioneered at the Olympics in September 2000, with values above 80% classified as failed, but the laboratory applying an 85% threshold for retrospective samples – to be absolutely certain that no false-positives (incorrectly failed tests) can occur when analyzing on samples stored for multiple years). For those samples with enough urine left, these results of test method A+B were finally also compared with the best and latest test method C: "Statistical discriminant analysis — taking account all the band profiles by statistical distinguish calculations for each band" (which feature both higher sensitivity and accuracy compared to test method B).

The results of test method A applied retrospectively in 2004, were published to have returned 44 positives (failed) and 9 negatives (not failed), while the last 7 samples did not return any readable results due to sample degradation. At first, the rider names with a positive sample were not made public, as it had only been conducted as scientific research. In July 2013, the antidoping committee of the French Senate however decided it would benefit the current doping fight to shed full light on the past, and so decided — as part of their "Commission of Inquiry into the effectiveness of the fight against doping" report — to publish all sample IDs along with the result of the retrospective test. This publication revealed, that the 9 negative samples belonged to 5 riders, of which 2 have admitted to have used EPO before or during the 1998 Tour de France (George Hincapie and Stuart O'Grady), while the 44 positive samples belonged to 33 riders — including race winner Marco Pantani, runner-up Jan Ullrich, third on the podium Bobby Julich, and points-competition winner Erik Zabel.

+ 44 Positive samples for Recombinant EPOSample ID Date Rider Team 066-211 19 July Banesto 066-191* 14 July Asics–CGA 066-197 12 July Mapei 066-189* 21 July Polti 066-199 13 July Casino-Ag2r 066-092* 21 July Cofidis 064-424 31 July Saeco 066-083 19 July Saeco 066-200 12 July Telekom 066-216 21 July Telekom 066-205* 11 July Riso Scotti–MGM 066-084 19 July Polti 066-209* 17 July GAN 066-090 26 July Saeco Macchine 066-086 19 July Casino-Ag2r 064-421* 28 July Telekom 065-110 ?02 Aug02 Aug Telekom 066-101 24 July Telekom 066-210* 18 July Telekom 066-224 26 July Telekom 066-198 14 July Telekom 066-085 15 July TVM–Farm Frites 066-087 25 July Cofidis 066-094 20 July Cofidis 066-219 22 July ONCE 066-183 22 July Banesto 064-408 28 July Mercatone Uno 066-095 22 July Mercatone Uno 066-096* 21 July Mercatone Uno 066-222 27 July Mercatone Uno 066-099 13 July Kelme–Costa Blanca 066-212 17 July Saeco Macchine 066-230* 21 July Rabobank 066-105 15 July Riso Scotti-MGM 066-215 17 July Riso Scotti-MGM 066-192* 16 July No ID N/A 066-082* 18 July Casino-Ag2r 066-223* 22 July Cofidis 065-112 ?02 Aug02 Aug Mapei 066-098 24 July Casino-Ag2r 064-415 26 July GAN 066-201* 12 July Mapei 066-213 17 July Telekom 066-103* 15 July Française des Jeux