Coucke clarifies

Marc Coucke isn't happy about the way the rivalry between Davitamon-Lotto and Quick.Step is being played out in some of the Belgian newspapers. The Davitamon boss believes the latest full page interview in which he claimed that Quick.Step is nowhere without Boonen, has been severely manipulated.

Coucke wrote on the team's website, "The full page article was an interview from the week before Flanders, with a few sentences from after the Ronde added and illustrated with a two month old photo, and was titled with a quote I never made and that I don't support. It's not because I love a bit of amicable rivalry that I don't have respect for, e.g. the win of Nuyens or Bettini's talent...I apologise for those never-made-statements in that never-taken interview."

The big boss of the Davitamon-Lotto cycling team is very happy with the team's biggest win of the season (Gent-Wevelgem) and wanted to honour Nico Mattan appropriately. "In haste, we put together this 'pilgrimage', with the destination being the pub Het Kleine Meer in St Eloois Winkel (where Mattan lives), and there Nico was declared a saint until 3:00am the next morning. So, I wouldn't put any money on him for PR. Nico deserved to have his nicest victory ever celebrated in that way. What is significant for the sympathy toward Nico and the atmosphere in the team, is that the party had over 700 visitors."

As for tomorrow's race, Coucke wrote that, "We'll go to Roubaix without the least bit of pressure, Peter (Van Petegem) is our team leader, we are proud of the Davitamon-Lotto team and its accomplishment, we thank and congratulate the whole team."