Riders "need to be an idiot" to be related to doping currently says Bahrain - Victorious DS

Bahrain - Victorious' pre-Tour de France raids have not yet let to any conclusion or public statement, and asked about it, team manager Milan Erzen has talked about the feelings towards the topic during the race.

Regarding the pre-Tour de France investigations, Erzen said the team received no information from it: “We don’t know. We don’t have any answers. I cannot tell you anything because we don’t have any information... When we have something of course we will say. We are just waiting," he said in the final press conference of the race to questions from VeloNews and CyclingWeekly.

“We don’t know why all these things have happened. Let’s sort it out now," he continued. "We know some answers that until now we didn’t know, and we always work by the rules and we will continue hard working and training hard.”

Before the start of the Tour, Bahrain had several of it's riders and staff members raided at their homes through several countries, and then again in Denmark days before the race started. It caused a lot of criticism from the team's management, which Erzen repeated during his responses: “Look, of course it’s frustrating, but from the other side, finally people need to understand that all these results, speed of the races, it’s not that somebody is using something".

“Guys that are working really hard. Material in the last 10 years has changed a lot, the teams they invest a lot of money," he explained. "Researches, what kind of tyres, what kind of wheels they will use in the races, you will have always jealous people which will start thinking that something is wrong. Nothing is wrong. In the last 10 years, anyone who is thinking to use something needs to be an idiot. That’s it. They need to be an idiot," Erzen affirmed.

Bahrain struggled throughout the Tour, with the likes of Damiano Caruso and Matej Mohoric failing to reach their normal level, and Jack Haig having crashed out early on. The team were in the fight for several stage wins but didn't manage to take one in the end.

Erzen also argumented that the doping suspicions comes from 'jealousy' and dialogue coming from other teams. He explained: “Yes, yes, yes. I will explain to you that, for example, our budget is 20 million, and many of the teams they have a bigger budget than us, and they cannot win stages for 10 years at the Tour de France".