Iain Glen: From Game of Thrones to cycling's dark side when Le Tour came to Ireland
Iain Glen and Louis Talpe in The Racer.
When the Tour de France came to Dublin, Enniscorthy and Cork in 1998, it was destined to be a celebration of cycling. Instead, it marked the beginning of a series of scandals that led to the world’s most-famous race being dubbed the Tour de Farce or Tour du Dopage.
Just days before the race began in Dublin, a Belgian sports physiotherapist, Willy Voet, was stopped in his Festina team car by customs near the French/Belgian border. What they found rocked professional cycling - large quantities of syringes, EPO, hormones and testosterone. The team was suspended in what became known as the Festina affair, a low in what was one of the darkest periods in the sport’s history. Further scandals followed.
