Luke Rowe has said that he used to try and make "life hell" for convicted dopers in the peloton.
The former Ineos Grenadiers rider, now a sports director for Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale, said that riders who had served bans did not deserve to return to professional cycling.
Speaking on the Watts Occurring podcast, which he co-hosts alongside friend and former teammate Geraint Thomas, the Welshman discussed his feelings on the topic after being asked who was generally disliked in the peloton by a listener.
"You know who I did flick? People who had been [tested] positive and came back to the sport. I would just ride through them and go out of my way to do it," Rowe explained.
"If it's black and white and you've been done for something and they're next to me, I'm just going to ride through them. I don't understand why every rider didn't do this because then it would make their life hell.
"Because they don't deserve to come back in my mind."
By flick, Rowe essentially means being unhelpful to a rider in the peloton, deliberately so – not giving way in the peloton or blocking space, for example.
The 35-year-old would have ridden alongside various riders banned for doping, including Alejandro Valverde and Alberto Contador. He also rode for Team Sky for one year, 2013, with Jonathan Tiernan-Locke, who was banned over discrepancies in his biological passport in 2013.
"If they shout something, normally they don't 'cos they know they haven't got a leg to stand on," Rowe continued, "that's probably the only category of rider I was like, I don't give a fuck about them. You've cheated me. You've cheated the sport. Fuck you.
"Imagine [if] every rider had the same mentality. Imagine you got caught for drugs, you're cheating, [a] scumbag, [you] come back to the sport, you're on the start line with 160 riders and all of them treat you like shit which is all you deserve. You wouldn't want to be in that peloton for long.
"You could just bully them out the sport. Back to where they belong."
Earlier this month, Thomas said that Ineos Grenadiers didn't deal in a "great" way with the revelation that their head soigneur David Rozman had links to a known doping doctor.
The recently-retired Tour de France winner told The Guardian that he "wasn't surprised" that Rozman had links to Mark Schmidt, who was convicted after Operation Aderlass.
During this summer's Tour de France, Ineos Grenadiers confirmed that Rozman was to be interviewed again by the International Testing Agency (ITA) into allegations that he had close links to Schmidt.
