Hein Verbruggen's presidency of the International Cycling Union (UCI) was dogged by controversy and scandal. Jeremy Whittle remembers his dealings with the former UCI President, who died earlier this week.
For the most part, Hein Verbruggen hated the media. As President of the UCI during the first – and perhaps the worst — of the Great Doping Scandals of the past 20 years, the Festina Affair, he spent the aftermath berating journalists and critics for their damning coverage of that crippled Tour de France.
The letter he sent to me in the autumn of 1998 called me a 'demagogue', a rabble-rouser, as if, long before 'Fake News' became such a get-out clause, I had invented the police raids, arrests, rider protests and walkouts that had characterised that year's race.
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Despite his bluster, however, he was a hugely influential figure within world sport, and within the Olympic movement. He was also a fiercely confrontational interviewee.
When, a few years after Festina, he agreed to meet for an interview in Los Angeles, he shook my hand, bypassed a 'hello' and began the conversation by saying: 'You write too much about doping.'
As doping scandals proliferated in cycling, attacking the media became a default stance for the UCI under his presidency, with fierce critic Paul Kimmage being one high-profile target. But there were others across Europe, all of whom were berated and targeted by Verbruggen.
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