Marie-George Buffet, France's sports minister under Prime Minister Lionel Jospin from 1997 to 2002, has admitted that surprise doping tests on the French national football team were halted in the run-up to the 1998 World Cup, the tournament France went on to win for the first time.
The admission came in a BFMTV documentary titled "Zidane, la fabrique d'une legende," which focuses on Zinedine Zidane, a star of that 1998 winning side who has since been appointed France's new head coach.
The film revisited a controversy sparked by an unannounced doping test carried out on French players in 1997, during a training camp in Tignes, a year before the team's World Cup triumph on home soil.
Players, coach Aime Jacquet and the French Football Federation had all criticized the surprise tests at the time, arguing they disrupted the team's preparation for the World Cup that France was hosting. All of the urinary tests came back negative.
'I was not to bother the Blues'
Alain Garnier, the doctor sent to Tignes by the Ministry of Sports to carry out the checks, said in the documentary that Buffet had confirmed an instruction to him directly: he was not to bother the Blues again until the World Cup. He said that, in effect, meant no more surprise controls, and that the instruction existed only verbally, never in writing.
Asked about this, Buffet said that if Dr Garnier said so, then yes, it was true, though she could not recall her exact words to him at the time. She said it was not put that way explicitly, but that it amounted to the same thing, and she described it as a step backward for the fight against doping. She said the fight resumed after the World Cup.
Buffet went on, in 1999, to introduce France's first law establishing an organized fight against doping.
Pressure "of all kinds"
Asked about the origin of the decision to stop testing French players, which Garnier said came from Matignon, the office of the French prime minister, Buffet said the instruction must have been passed down through ministerial cabinets.
Buffet, who has said she faced pressure "of all kinds" during that period, had until now denied ever giving instructions to halt the surprise controls. Testifying under oath before a French Senate committee in 2013, she said no such directive had ever been given.
France beat Brazil 3-0 in the final of the 1998 World Cup at the Stade de France, the country's first world title. Jacquet coached that squad, while Zidane, who scored twice in the final, has now taken over as head coach of the national team.
