As for his participation in Italian Gran Fondo events for Team Olympus under a false name (Francesco Del Ponte, an Italian translation of Frank Vandenbroucke), the Belgian denied that he had put Tom Boonen's photo on his racing license. "I didn't do that! If I was going to do something like this, I would have put someone else's photo. I don't know who did it and I don't want to know." Vandenbroucke was training but was looking for more of a challenge. "The training gets boring and I missed being in a group... (Team Olympus) asked me if I wanted to race (Gran Fondos) so I decided to give them a try. But I've never passed the finish line, I don't want to interfere in the races of the amateur riders."
In fact, it was team president Evgeni Berzin, winner of the '94 Giro d'Italia who admitted he put Boonen's photo in Vandenbroucke's UDACE license, the Italian organisation that sanction Gran Fondos. Berzin told La Gazetta dello Sport "it was a little mistake, but we changed it. There's no harm done. Frank comes to our (Team Olympus) training sessions twice a week and I'm even riding again too."