Pubdate: Sat, 12 Dec 1998 Source: Wire: Reuters Copyright: 1998 Reuters Limited. CYCLING-EX-FESTINA OFFICIALS APPEAL AGAINST BANS PARIS - Former Festina team sporting director Bruno Roussel and masseur Willy Voet are appealing against suspensions of five and three years respectively from cycling. Lawyers for the two men, caught up in the Tour de France doping scandal in July, said on Friday night they were lodging the appeals with the French Cycling Federation (FFC), whose disciplinary committee handed down the suspensions. The FFC has not officially announced the suspensions, having simply notified both men by letter. Roussel, who admitted in July that his team carried out organised doping, is contesting the legitimacy of the FFC to ban him rather than the sanction as such, the lawyers said. He believes the FFC, by turning a blind eye to doping in cycling over the years, allowed the practice to flourish. "By connivance, the federal authorities have for years allowed the acceptance, at all professional and amateur levels, of the idea that a clean victory was, if not impossible then at least improbable," they said in a statement. The Festina team were kicked out of the Tour de France in mid-July, a week after the start and some 10 days after Voet was arrested by customs officers with a carload of banned substances. - --- Checked-by: Rich O'Grady