EYEWITNESS: THE POLICE RAID ON BARLOWORLD’S HOTEL

A chance reservation meant I was staying in the Barloworld team hotel on Tuesday night in the Tour de France. And that meant that when I went downstairs on Wednesday morning at around 9.30 am it was to find a large number of gendarmes buzzing around the lobby.

They?d come to arrest Moises Dueñas, the Spanish rider on the Barloworld team, following his positive ?A? test for EPO. Doping is a criminal offence in France, and to judge by the number of policemen - a guesstimate would be around 40, with some eight or nine police vehicles in the street outside - it?s not one they take lightly.

Four or five blue-shirted gendarmes form a line across the main door of the Hotel Le Rex, a large building situated on a side-street close to Tarbes central square. Others are standing around outside.

Their mood is businesslike to say the least. ?Either stay in or go out, but don?t hang around here.? one gendarme growls at me when I approach the hotel?s main door.

Yet more are on the sixth floor, where the entire Barloworld team have their accommodation and Dueñas's room is being searched, just like Manolo Beltran?s when the results from his failed dope test came through last week.

Back downstairs there?s a real feeling of tension in the air, coupled with confusion. Journalists staying in the hotel stand around in tiny knots in the centre of the lobby, trying to find out what has happened and waiting to see who, if anybody, gets taken away by the police. Meanwhile, in one corner, a Barloworld team official is talking nineteen to the dozen into his mobile phone.

Nobody seems to know what is going on, although the rumour that it is Dueñas who?s been caught circulates persistently.

There are other Barloworld riders in the lift I catch back up to my room on the fourth floor, their faces grim. They don?t say anything although one team assistant is talking shrilly to them in Afrikaans. Whatever she?s saying it?s not good.

TV cameramen gradually appear outside the hotel, but the gendarmes don?t seem to want to let them in. It later emerges that Dueñas has been escorted out the hotel?s back entrance. Slowly but surely whilst the media gather, the tension deflates.

Ninety minutes after the first policemen have arrived, with a wailing of sirens, they?re gone. The impact of the Tour?s second failed dope test of 2008 will surely last a lot longer.

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