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> Mart Smeets was the face of Studio Sport for many years. During the Tour de France, he took Dutch sports fans on a three-week tour of France every year. The now 78-year-old icon would sometimes come across people he had absolutely nothing in common with during that time. Smeets was recently a guest on the podcast In de fan by Thijs Zonneveld and Hidde van Warmerdam and was asked what he thinks of when he thinks of cycling in the 1990s. “Virenque,” he responds immediately, much to Zonneveld’s delight. “And I immediately start puking when I say the name Virenque.”
> “There has never been a bigger slither than him,” says Smeets about Richard Virenque. The Frenchman was at the center of the doping scandal during the Tour de France in 1998. While almost all of his Festina teammates quickly confessed to having broken the rules, the climber, often in tears, continued to deny having done anything wrong. Virenque was not suspended and continued riding for two more years before confessing in 2000, when he really had nowhere to go. He had to sit out for nine months. "He has fooled the entire cycling world," Smeets states fiercely. "Not just the French, everyone has been fooled by him. And the worst of it all, that suddenly comes to mind," Smeets continues. "The day that the Italian Casartelli lies dead on the Col d'Aspin." Smeets refers to 18 July 1995, when Fabio Casartelli died in a fall on the descent of the Col de Portet d'Aspet. “On that day, Virenque crosses the line first and is shouted across the line by a crazy, mad, screaming, blustering, self-absorbed Tour de France announcer. And he stands up like the great triumphator, with his hands up in the air. He stands on the podium and we all think: this can’t be, this can’t be. This just can’t be. And who tells him that?”