The interest that the Festina trial brought to him led to an invitation to write a column during the 1999 Tour for Le Parisien, a newspaper in the same corporate group as the Tour de France itself. Ian Austen wrote in Procycling:
On the whole his columns were largely innocuous if entertaining looks at life in the peloton. If anything, he sometimes went out of his way to dispel doping rumours. After the stage into Blois, which passed at record average speed, Bassons warned readers: 'Don't get any ideas about the record speed. With a wind like we had, it's normal to ride this fast.' But two columns stuck out. After Lance Armstrong showed that not only had he recovered from cancer, he'd risen to the top of the pack, Bassons wrote that his performances had 'shocked' the peloton.
Bassons said Armstrong rode up alongside on the Alpe d'Huez stage to tell him "it was a mistake to speak out the way I do and he asked why I was doing it. I told him that I'm thinking of the next generation of riders. Then he said 'Why don't you leave, then?'"[8] Armstrong confirmed the story. On the main evening news on TF1, a national television station, Armstrong said: "His accusations aren't good for cycling, for his team, for me, for anybody. If he thinks cycling works like that, he's wrong and he would be better off going home."[9][10][11][12]
Bassons was shunned by other riders. Giving a television interview at St-Étienne, he said, a passing rider in his own team said: "Watch what you say!"[13][14] Bassons said: "I started feeling isolated. In the middle of 170 riders, that's a tough way to live."[15] Riders shunned him or at best nodded.[16] He cracked, saying he hadn't wanted to leave the race but his nerves could not stand it anymore.[17] He said:
The [team doctor] comforted me. We often talk together about the problem of doping and we share the same ideas. I confided in him and I cried a little [j'ai chialé]. I got to sleep but a bit after midnight I could no longer sleep because of my worries. I went into the corridor, I phoned my coach, Antoine Vayer, and Pascale, my wife. At 5.30am I had my breakfast and I packed my case. I crossed with Marc[18] and he said I was letting down the team. He said a rider could leave the race if he cracked physically but he couldn't accept that one can crack mentally. I said goodbye to everyone but one rider didn't look at me and refused to shake my hand. That hurt.[19]
The reporter Jean-Michel Rouet wrote:
Sometimes he was congratulated on his courage, as Daniel Baal, the president of the FFC[20] at the start at Sestrieres. But more often, others waved their fist [on le montrait le doigt], looked elsewhere, if they didn't just insult him. He has a few friends and a heap of enemies. His solitude was the living proof that nothing fundamental has changed in the morals of the milieu. Christophe Bassons died at the stake [est mort au bucher], burned by his passion. On official communiqués, he left two words: non partant[21]. The peloton had already forgotten rider number 152.[22]
The sports minister, Marie-George Buffet, said: "What a strange role reversal. Rather than fighting against doping, they're fighting its opponent." She wrote to him to sympathise, saying that it was time someone spoke out.[23]
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