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For a week, relayed on the Internet, France Television promised us a bomb. A sensational revelation about the South African team that won the World Cup at home in 1995, in front of Nelson Mandela just elected.

The report, broadcast Sunday in Stage 2, indeed what to choose from the first image. On the Joost van der Westhuizen, the twirling half of scrum of Springbok, in a chair, speaking with difficulty, has been suffering from Charcot's disease since 2011. A rare disease, affecting only two out of every 100,000 people, but not including three former players of the South Africa team of the 1990s.

Tribute to Joost van der Westhuizen

Cases that challenge

To these players, adds Ruben Kruger, 3rd dead line of the brain to 39 years. And André Venter, suffering from transverse myelitis, a chance in a million ... That's a lot.

The risk and occurrence of orphan diseases in the population can be questioned. We can not help but make the connection with the Italian foot: 40 players have been reached since the Charcot disease since 1973. The specter of doping.

It is not explained that this disease is rare, is likely to develop in certain categories of population such as farmers or high-level athletes, except that the exponent to a common exogenous agent.

Pesticides are advanced as a possible cause, intense physical activity seems to be a risk factor ... just like the price of corticosteroids or anabolic drugs that can trigger these symptoms.

Players polled by France 2

Were South Africans doped?

Doped, were they in 1995? The question has already been addressed on Rue89. Christian Daulouède, Bègles' doctor at the end of the 90s, said that 14 of the 17 South Africans were spending 60 points in France in 1997, which allowed the time to be for the control of positive to steroids, for example.

Impressive physical players heading to the princes' park spectators who have come to attend a training session with opposition. That day, the brave blues on the field with a faster team, more physical, superior in all areas.

The South Africans interviewed by France 2 recognize the B12 vitamin injections, the taking of pills authorized at the time, banned since. Anti-doping experts know that B12 usually accompanies EPO treatments.

We were talking about epoch or anti-doping was embryonic, EPO undetectable. Rugby at the time was amateur and controls uncommon. Which invalidates the argument advanced by the South African players of the time: we were not doped, the proof, we had never been tested positive. A classic argument, of which the precedent is not part.

Fabien Galthié who had this period to be played in South Africa and against the Springboks, raises the story of the poisoning, the ignorance of the players who trusted the doctors, but who were also victims of the pharmaceutical laboratories . He himself tells in his book to have seen vitamin injections when he enjoyed in South Africa. He would have refused them.

We will never know if this generation of players was doped, and in what way. Some will evoke the symbol much more important than men: the victory of South Africa during the 1995 World Cup and its impact on the end of apartheid. Invictus, Clint Eastwood's film, would be THE truth for the story.

Invictus Trailer

Where Clint Eastwood demonstrates that when it comes to rugby, he knows nothing about it

Apartheid was abolished in 1991, and if the 1995 victory was important, it was only for the image of a black president handing the cup to a white captain. The Springbok team was symbolic, as was Chester Williams, the only black in this Afrikaaners team, who later said in his biography that some players refused to meet his eyes.

Nelson Mandela, clever politician, had seen in this World Cup the opportunity to give another image of his country, to endorse reconciliation.

But the underwear was not necessarily beautiful. The doping perhaps, but also the home arbitration, as in the semi-final against France, when the referee Welsh grants a non-existent test to South Africa, and refuses two to France ... And What about the suspicious food poisoning that hit the New Zealand players two days before the match?