Danish champ acquitted of sex offence charges

Brian Holm, Omega Pharma's Danish sporting director, was on Thursday cleared of sexually assaulting a seven-year-old girl, his lawyer said.

 

Holm had been charged with indecent exposure after the girl, a friend of his daughter's, claimed he had removed her underwear and had licked her ear after coming home drunk one night.

 

The 51-year-old had denied the charges but admitted to being so drunk on the night in question that he threw up.

 

A court in Copenhagen found that although the girl "had been terrified", there was insufficient evidence to support her claims, Danish daily BT wrote.

 

"He wants to go home to his family now. This has been exhausting for him," Holm's lawyer Karoline Doessing Normann told AFP.

 

Holm was a professional cyclist from 1986 to 1998 and won the Paris-Brussels semi-classic in 1991. In 2002 he admitted to using doping in the 1990s.