After Philippe Gilbert won the Omloop Het Volk earlier this month, he said "Thank you, Jef. I won only because of you, because of your book!" D'Hont explained that after the Festina scandal in 1998, French teams have had "hard anti-doping programmes and so the French riders didn't have a chance against the others, who obviously continued with their deceit." Gilbert told him, "The others are suddenly not as good as before," and "I took that as a very fine compliment."