Hein Verbruggen
Sports administrator who was caught up in doping scandal
HEIN VERBRUGGEN, who has died aged 75, was president of cycling’s governing body, the Union Cycliste Internationale, from 1991 to 2005 during the reign of Lance Armstrong, but was later accused of helping the American star to cheat.
Armstrong was stripped of his seven Tour de France titles and banned for life from racing in 2012 after a US anti-doping investigation accused him of being behind “the most sophisticated, professionalised and successful doping programme ever seen”. In an interview with the Daily Mail in 2013, Armstrong accused Verbruggen of agreeing, during the 1999 Tour de France, to blame a positive test for cortisone on a backdated prescription for a steroid cream to treat saddle sores. Verbruggen, Armstrong claimed, had said the positive finding would be a “knockout punch” for the sport after the Festina affair of 1998 (so named after the French team that was ejected from the Tour de France for evidence of systematic doping), and that they had to “come up with something”.
“I’m not going to lie to protect these guys,” said Armstrong “I hate them. They threw me under the bus. I’m done with them.”
Verbruggen dismissed the charges as “b---s---” and accused Armstrong of making the accusations for financial gain. He also denied earlier claims by Armstrong’s former team-mate Floyd Landis that he had accepted a $100,000 bribe from Armstrong to cover up a positive test by French anti-doping authorities in 2001.
“How can I take care of something that is known already by the laboratory, that is known already by the French Ministry [which conducted the test], that is known by the UCI, the anti-doping people at the UCI? It’s ridiculous,” he told The Daily Telegraph.
A 2015 report by an independent three-man investigation panel concluded that UCI officials had allowed doping to flourish and broke their own rules so that Armstrong, a cancer survivor, could cheat his way to becoming the superstar the sport badly needed. “For a long time, the main focus of UCI leadership was on the growth of the sport worldwide and its priority was to protect the sport’s reputation; doping was perceived as a threat to this,” the report found. “The emphasis of UCI’S antidoping policy was, therefore, to give the impression that UCI was tough on doping rather than actually being good at anti-doping.”
While it found no evidence that Verbruggen had been bribed to cover up alleged positive tests, it portrayed him as an “autocratic” leader who had undermined anti-doping efforts. It also confirmed that the first of Armstrong’s seven straight Tour titles in 1999 was possible only because the UCI accepted a back-dated prescription to explain positive tests during the race.
Verbruggen dismissed the report as “unfair, biased and incomplete in its methodology”, though he claimed it had confirmed his “complete innocence”.
Henricus Verbruggen was born on June 21 1941 in Helmond in the southern Netherlands. After Nyenrode Business University, he became a food industry sales manager in Belgium where he launched the Mars Bar. Belgium banned television advertising, so he hit on the idea of promoting the brand by having Mars co-sponsor Belgium’s Flandria cycle racing team.
In 1975 he set up his own consultancy and joined the professional cycling committee of the Royal Dutch Cycling Union. In 1978 he became its representative on the UCI, assuming the presidency in 1991.
He also became a member of the International Olympic Committee in 1996, helping to organise the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens and the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing.
Verbruggen was married but divorced. He is survived by two sons.