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Former UCI president Hein Verbruggen has admitted that the governing body tipped off riders including Lance Armstrong about suspicious anti-doping test results.
The Dutchman, who remains honorary president of the governing body that he led between 1991 and 2005, made the revelation in a statement issued in response to an article in Dutch magazine Vrij Nederland.
"It used to be the UCI's policy – and indeed also of other federations – to discuss atypical blood test results, or other test results, with the riders concerned," he explained.
"Riders who were doping [but who had yet to fail a test] were effectively warned that they were being watched and that they would be targeted in future with the aim of getting them to stop doping.
"However, if the atypical test results were genuinely not caused by doping, the rider also had the opportunity to have a medical check."
According to Verbruggen, the UCI drew up its policy to tell riders about suspicious tests "after some considerable debate and deliberation.
"Its purpose was to protect clean riders against competitors who might be doping, rather than to let those clean riders continue to be put at a disadvantage until such time that the drug cheats could be caught,” he claimed.
“It was intended to be a two-pronged attack on doping: prevention both by dissuasion and repression."
In the wake of the Lance Armstrong scandal, Verbruggen has come under a huge amount of criticism with many believing that the UCI helped protect the rider, including after a suspect test for EPO during the 2001 Tour de Suisse.
According to Dr Martial Saugy, who runs the Swiss anti-doping laboratory that tested the sample concerned, the UCI arranged for Armstrong to visit the facility to see how tests were conducted.
At the same time, Armstrong pledged donations totalling $125,000 to the UCI. While those payments have long been public knowledge and indeed confirmed by current UCI president Pat McQuaid, it had been assumed that the rider decided to offer the money himself.
However, in his interview with Oprah Winfrey last week, Armstrong said that it had been the UCI that had requested the money from him.
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