Pascal Hervé passed away during the Christmas holidays, but the circumstances surrounding his death are still unknown. In September last year, the Frenchman revealed that he had undergone surgery for a cancer tumor in his stomach.
Hervé competed in the Olympic Games in Barcelona 1992 and won a stage in the classic cycling competition Giro d'Italia 1996, but is most known for being part of the scandal-ridden French cycling team Festina.
In the summer of 1998, the team's masseur was stopped – three days before the start of the Tour de France – with large quantities of doping substances in his car. Shortly afterwards, sports manager Bruno Roussel admitted that the team had doped and the team was disqualified from the classic cycling competition.
Even most of the cyclists in the team admitted, but Frenchman Pascal Hervé was one of two who denied.
More than two and a half years later, a then 36-year-old Hervé admitted to using banned substances.
I didn't admit it before because I wanted everyone to admit – not just the nine idiots who got caught during the Tour de France 1998, said Hervé during the trial against the cycling team.
In the summer of 2001, Hervé withdrew from Giro d'Italia after testing positive for the blood doping substance epo.
