Five Tour riders admit drug use

 PARIS (AP) -- The Tour de France drug scandal widened Monday, with five cyclists now admitting they took banned substances and two leaders of a Dutch team facing legal questioning.
 The Tour already has faced a sit-down strike by riders angered by the attention given the scandal. However, officials for the cycling showcase reject calls to cancel the race.
 "There is no question of stopping the Tour," Tour director Jean-Marie Leblanc told the French newspaper Liberation.
 Two top officials of the Dutch team TVM travelled under police escort Monday to Reims, where a judge probably will place them under investigation.
 TVM sporting director Cees Priem and team doctor Andrei Mikhailov are to be asked about the use of the hormone EPO by riders on their team.
 The director and doctor of the top-ranked Festina team already are imprisoned, accused of providing drugs for their team. Festina was expelled from the race because its riders were said to have taken EPO, a hormone that increases the supply of red blood cells.
 "I will wait to have more precise details before deciding to exclude the team," Leblanc said of the TVM team.
 Five cyclists have admitted taking EPO.
 "Yes I took EPO," Swiss Festina member Laurent Dufaux was quoted as saying Monday in the Swiss newspaper Le Matin. "Caught up in the whole business, I took it for three years under strict medical supervision. But I never abused it."
 He added: "I am afraid people will put a lid over the five who have confessed, that they will be sanctioned and that nothing will change."
 Countrymen Alex Zuelle and Armin Meier are among others who admitted to taking the drug. But Richard Virenque, Pascal Herve and Didier Rous of France and Australia's Neil Stephens deny any wrongdoing.
 Frenchmen Laurent Brochard and Christophe Moreau also have said they used EPO.
 Leblanc admitted to fearing the worst Friday when cyclists refused for two hours to start the day's stage.
 "For 15 minutes, I thought that the Tour was going to stop by itself," he told Liberation. "If the riders had persisted, if the stage had not begun, I would have thought differently. The Tour would have definitely broken down. But stopping it myself, no."