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Virenque retires from cycling Fri 24 September, 2004 11:20 PARIS (Reuters) - Richard Virenque, the winner of a record seven King of the Mountains titles in the Tour de France, has announced his retirement from cycling. "I have been riding for twenty years and I didn't want to do it for a year too many. That's why I have decided to quit now," the 34-year-old French rider told a news conference on Friday at the Olympia, the most famous music hall in Paris. Virenque started his career in 1991. He briefly held the yellow jersey in 1992 but never won the Tour, finishing second in 1997 behind Jan Ullrich. He might best be remembered as the man who made EPO (erythropoietin) famous. He was kicked out of the Tour in 1998 with the rest of his Festina team after it was discovered that they had used EPO. Banned a year and a half later after confessing in court that he had taken drugs, Virenque returned a changed man and won his seventh polka-dot jersey in July.
