Former UCI boss derides Armstrong link as ‘cynical’

Former UCI President Hein Verbruggen had assets managed by the investment bank of Thom Weisel, backer of the US Postal Services team that disgraced American cyclist Lance Armstrong rode for during his rise to fame in the late 90s and early 2000s — but has denied any wrongdoing.

BMC general manager Jim Ochowicz, who worked as a broker for Thomas Weisel Partners at the time, told the influential Wall Street Journal newspaper that the firm managed some of Verbruggen’s assets between 2001 and 2004 — when Armstrong won his fourth, fifth and sixth Tour titles.

Ochowicz had previously managed Armstrong at Motorola and he later became a stockbroker at Robert Baird & Co. when the team disbanded at the end of 1996, while Verbruggen is reported to have invested with him in 1999. Ochowicz began to work for Thomas Weisel Partners investment bank in 2001 and the Verbruggen account moved with him.

“There was no hanky-panky,” Ochowicz said, adding that Weisel had no direct access to Verbruggen’s account: “I have no recollection of talking about Hein’s accounts with Thom Weisel,” added Ochowicz.

Verbruggen, who in 2008 told the newspaper that he had never had a business relationship with Weisel and Ochowicz, this week said that the matter was “getting ridiculous.”

“I have given Jim a small amount of money to manage for me, and he moved to Thom Weisel,” Verbruggen admitted yesterday. “I didn’t even know who Thom Weisel was. There is no relationship whatsoever. You give a guy that you like a small amount of money to manage and 12 years later, I end up in a doping case.”

Travis Tygart, head of the US Anti-Doping Agency and whose investigation into doping at the US Postal Service team saw Armstrong stripped of his seven Tour de France titles, voiced his displeasure about the relationship between Verbruggen and Weisel.

“To have the head of the sport, who’s responsible for enforcing anti-doping rules, in business with the owner of the team that won seven straight Tours de France in violation of those rules — it certainly stinks to high heaven, particularly now, given what’s been exposed that happened under his watch,” he said.

Verbruggen responded through Associated Press: “Nothing illegal has happened, or ever did. The comments of Mr Tygart, I would call them cynical almost,” adding that he would be prepared to provide information on the transaction to the independent commission established to report on the UCI’s management of the Armstrong affair.

Meanwhile, the 41-year-old Texan was last night stripped of the Olympic bronze medal he won at the 2000 Sydney Games, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) confirmed.

The IOC acted after the International Cycling Union (UCI) disqualified all of Armstrong’s results as a consequence of the American rider being found guilty of systematic doping.

Elsewhere details of the opening three British stages of next year’s Tour de France were announced at a ceremony in Paris yesterday. .

The race begins on July 5 with a flat road stage from Leeds to Harrogate while the peloton remains in Yorkshire the following day with a stage from York to Sheffield. Tour director Christian Prudhomme described that particular stage as “worthy of Liège-Bastogne-Liège” as it features no fewer than eight climbs, with six of them coming in the final 60 kilometres before Sheffield. The third and final British leg will be between Cambridge and London on July 7, before the riders proceed to France via Eurostar.