Following the extraordinary domination by Italian riders in early 1994, a doctor with the Belgian cycling federation, Chris Goessens, told Belgian newspaper Het Belang van Limburg that, to him, the victories “smelt dirty”. At the same time, rumours of EPO usage started to circulate, linked to Gewiss team doctor, the not-quite-yet notorious Michele Ferrari.
Reactions to Goessens’ accusations were immediate and unsupportive. Manuel Fonseca, the president of Spain’s national anti-doping committee, maintained that the Belgian had no proof, but then went on to say that, “with something as hard to detect as EPO, it’s as if we were to prohibit you from having a **** in the middle of the Amazon jungle. Sure, we can prohibit you from doing it, but when it comes to enforcing it…” He left the sentence unfinished.
UCI president Hein Verbruggen also weighed in with an open letter to the cycling press, in which he stressed that the reasons he believed that the Italians had been so successful this season were that they were “well-organised and managed.”