Police raid Bahrain Victorious team again on eve of Tour de France

The Tour de France starts in Copenhagen on Friday with a cloud hanging over it after the Bahrain Victorious team, winners of three stages in last year’s race, was subjected to a second police raid in a week.

The team’s hotel in Brøndby was searched at dawn on Thursday morning by Danish police officers as part of an investigation by French prosecutors. It was the second search of the team’s riders and staff in a week and follows an initial search and investigation that began during the latter stages of last year’s race.

The team’s official pre-race press conference on Thursday lunchtime lasted only eight minutes after riders and staff refused to answer questions about the police investigation.

However, in a statement issued on Thursday the team said: “Following the police search into some staff and riders’ homes on Monday, the Team Bahrain Victorious hotel was searched by Danish police at the request of the French prosecutors this morning (Thursday) at 5:30 am.

“The officers searched all team vehicles, staff and riders’ rooms. The team fully cooperated with all the officers’ requests, and the search was completed within two hours. No items were seized from the team.”

Since the first police raids in Pau during the 2021 Tour, the team have maintained their innocence. Raids on team hotels in the modern Tour are not unprecedented and there has been intermittent police involvement over the past two decades or so, the most renowned being the tsunami of searches and detentions during the 1998 Tour’s infamous Festina affair.

The latest dawn raid was at the same hotel as the Groupama-FDJ team and their rider Stefan Küng responded angrily to the police presence. “It gives an image that we are all cheaters, and that’s not very