Velon Chief Executive Graham Bartlett has denied that Velon has asked riders to sign away their imaging rights. He has called the claim “nonsense”.

Cyclingnews has received a leaked document that was sent from Velon to its 11 member teams, clearly entitled 'addendum to the contract between team and rider'. It sets out requirements relating to image rights and the processing of personal data and requests that the rider signs and returns it.

Bartlett says the document does exist but that its purpose isn’t for riders to sign away their imaging rights.

“What it has been positioned as is that Velon has created the document and told the teams to do it and told the riders they must sign it and it’s just not true. It’s a nice story, but, unfortunately, it is complete nonsense,” Bartlett told Cyclingnews. “Every rider contract has to agree with the UCI provisions and the national law of the country and is in line with the model contract.”

He says the document was produced for its eleven members at the request of their stakeholders. It is merely a piece of advice the team’s have made to “bring the sport up to the level of others.”

“There was a central piece of knowledge that was made available to the teams for them to decide what they would like to do and how they would like to move forward in their discussions with their riders,” explained Bartlett. “That central piece of advice is a source that is available to the teams to, one, decide if they want to do that, two, look at their existing agreements and decide that they’ve already covered it or, three, change something and discuss it with the riders."

Bartlett’s statements have been echoed by some in the professional peloton, with an anonymous team manager confirming that everything had been blown out of hand.

A WorldTour team manager, who wishes to remain unnamed, told Cyclingnews: "It has all been blown out of proportion, Velon never ever said to any team to do what they suggest, the addendum was simply a discussion of how a team could go about including it in their contracts if they ever wanted to. From our side the document was never read in a way to apply to the riders, it was a simple suggestion in discussion."