PARIS (AP) — A Marseille prosecutor has opened a preliminary investigation into suspected doping during the Tour de France and two members of the Arkea-Samsic team were being held for questioning, the French press reported on Monday.
A day after the end of the three-week Tour in Paris, a probe reportedly begun earlier into suspicions of doping culminated with the opening of an investigation.
Sports newspaper L’Equipe said gendarmes from a special public health unit led a search on Wednesday in Meribel, in the Savoie region, concerning riders of the Arkea-Samsic team.
The French press on Monday quoted a Marseille prosecutor, Dominique Laurens, evoking “the discovery of numerous health products including medicine in personal belongings … and above all a method that could be qualified as doping.”
Prosecutor Dominique Laurens spoke to the French news agency, Agence France-Presse. The prosecutor’s office refused to provide information in a telephone query.
The preliminary investigation was opened for administering and prescribing banned substances without medical justification or detention of and the method used without medical justification, L’Equipe and other news outlets reported.
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