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“But now I can speak freely. I was seriously annoyed, there are no standards anymore. We pay 120,000 euros a year for our WorldTour license. There are rules, strict laws about when you can make a proposal to a rider under contract, but everyone ignores them and no one gets fined.”
> You did that too, didn't you?
“Oh yeah? Why doesn't Wout van Aert ride for us? Because I respected the regulations. I told him: if you come with a letter that you are free, it's fine.”
> Every now and then you have to talk to someone who is still under contract, otherwise you are too late, right?
“Now you do, but not before. The time of Lefevere, when a word was a word, no longer exists. A handshake is a contract to me.”
> We knew that you have principles, but now you also sound a bit naive.
(on a roll) “Ralph Denk, with his false head, invited me to the Sheraton Hotel in Brussels during corona. We were all alone in a large room, he hadn't even provided a drink. He asked how much my team had to cost and what position I wanted. So I asked what he really wanted. ‘Remco’, he said.”
“I still needed a major sponsor for the following year and I said to leave us alone until March 31. That's early in the year, but if I didn't have anyone by then, I was prepared to give my riders time off. But I found Deceuninck.”
“In the meantime, Denk had already sent an email to dad Evenepoel, with Bora in the header. He made them completely crazy. You can lose your WorldTour license based on that. I forwarded that to the UCI. They promised that they would definitely do something with it. What did they do: nothing. They are afraid of Red Bull.” “Who the fuck is the UCI? I did what I did for 45 years. I brought a few hundred million euros to the race. After my retirement I didn’t even get an email. Nothing, no thanks, nothing. But I know they’re glad I’m gone. Of course, such a bore... Ha, I don’t need the UCI. And they can’t suspend me anymore.” (grins)