Danish Cycling Union president Tom Lund has said that that he believes that the UCI’s honorary president Hein Verbruggen should be dismissed from the governing body because of the Lance Armstrong/US Postal Service scandal.
Lund said that he considered the payment of large sums of money from Armstrong to the UCI to be a resignation matter, particularly as it has emerged that Armstrong doped for much of his career. Verbruggen vocally defended the American on several occasions, and was quoted by the AD.nl website last year as saying he was certain that he ‘never, never, never doped.’
“We think that Verbruggen must resign because as president he received a large amount of money from Lance Armstrong,” he said while speaking on the Deadline programme on DR2. “We do not think it is correct that he hides a large money transfer from a racer who subsequently is investigated about meeting the rules of the sport.”
Vebruggen is honorary president of the UCI and was actual president between 1991 and 2005. He has since been succeeded by Irishman Pat McQuaid, but remains on the management committee. He is regarded as retaining a lot of influence.
Meanwhile Lund has also commented on Tyler Hamilton’s claims that Bjarne Riis not only suggested he visit the doping doctor Eufemiano Fuentes, but that he also accompanied him on one such trip in early 2002. Riis said recently that he never met Fuentes and distanced himself from claims that he wanted his top riders to use his services.
Hamilton wrote about the issue in his book, something which led to a denial from Riis in August. “I can absolutely deny that this is the case. It is simply not true,” he told the Ritzau news agency then. “I do not know Fuentes. I have never met him.”
Hamilton has contradicted his in interviews with Danish media. He told Dr.dk that Riis accompanied him to Fuentes in 2002, and repeated that to Sporten.dk.
“We met after, I believe, Pays Basque, a race in Spain,” he said. “Just after that race we were staying in Spain for another one day race afterwards. Bjarne knew I was meeting with Fuentes and asked to come along. I am not sure if it was the firs time they met, but we were all in the room together.
“Eufemiano was not so happy that I asked Bjarne to come. Bjarne had expressed interested in coming to see him and I didn’t think it as a problem. But Eufemiano was not too pleased with me.”
Riis lied for many years about his own doping, but finally admitted it in May 2007. Lund told Deadline that if the Dane has been telling mistruths again, that he must leave cycling.
“He has no future in the sport if it turns out that he knows Fuentes,” he asserted. “You can lie on national television once and get national forgiveness. We have seen that he has received that. But I do not think you can do it twice, said Tom Lund.” Riis declined to comment.
Hamilton said that he wasn’t surprised that Riis would deny it. “I understand. I denied for a long time,” he said. “It is kind of the first reaction for most people, to deny. I did it myself so I can’t be too mad at Bjarne for denying, but unfortunately it is the truth. He knew what I was doing.”
Asked if he believed things could be different now, he said that he hoped so. “I don’t follow cycling like I used to. Hopefully Bjarne and his team is on the right path, hopefully he is running a straight line,” he said. “I have no reason not to believe that today.”
However he expressed concerns at the team’s co-sponsor Oleg Tinkoff, saying that he gave the Tinkoff Credit Systems riders the green light to dope when Hamilton raced with the team in 2007. Tinkoff previously denied this.