Leading French cyclist Richard Virenque has been accused of using performance-enhancing drugs by a back-up member of his own team, a newspaper reported yesterday.

The daily newspaper Le Parisien quoted Willy Voet, the physiotherapist of the French Festina team, as saying: "Let Richard dare tell me to my face that he does not use drugs.

"He takes neither more nor less products than the other riders."

Voet, currently facing police charges, became the key figure in a drugs scandal which enveloped this year's Tour de France.

When police searched a Festina car driven by Voet in July they discovered around 400 phials of banned drugs. He was arrested and later released on bail.

The scandal led to the team being thrown out of the race and sparked a series of raids on other teams in the event.

Most of the Festina riders later admitted to police they had taken drugs but Virenque, the team leader and one of the world's top climbers, has vehemently denied the accusation and said if he had been given banned products then he had not known about it.

Voet was quoted as saying that Festina team doctor Eric Ryckaert injected riders in front of him "and when the doctor was busy, the riders injected themselves."

Virenque responded yesterday by telling French radio station France Info that he planned to sue Voet.

The accusations are the most direct made by the physio so far. Earlier this month Voet, a Belgian, said the riders knew they were being given drugs. Asked on television whether a rider could plead, as Virenque had done, that they did not know they were being doped, he had replied: "No, no, no."

The Swiss cycling federation (FCS), meanwhile, said yesterday it planned to ask the sport's international governing body UCI (Union cycliste internationale) to ban three Swiss riders in the Festina team, including leading star Alex Zulle, for six months.