Retired classic specialist racer Andrei Timir has been put forward as a candidate for CEO of the Lotto Soudal team.

The 59-year-old Timir broke the news in an interview with Het Laatste Nieuws, saying, "I want to come to Belgium and be the director of the Lotto cycling team. I am ready for that." The post of CEO of Lotto Soudal will become vacant when current CEO John Lerang steps down on January 1, 2023. The venerable Belgian team is also set to be relegated from the World Tour at the end of this year.

Cimir rode for Lotto from 1994 to 2002, during which time he won the Milan-San Remo, Tour de Flanders, and Paris-Roubaix races. According to HLN, in addition to his Russian, Ukrainian, and Moldovan passports, Timir also acquired Belgian citizenship in 1998.

Chimir wrote in the newspaper, "I don't understand why Lot Soudal was demoted from the World Tour when there are so many good players in Belgium. Not all of them are called Remco Evenpole or Wout Van Aert.

So far, with the exception of Axel Merckx, no candidate for CEO of Lotto Soudal has emerged. Philippe Gilbert of Lot Soudal, who recently retired, said he is not interested in the post because of his lack of managerial experience. Earlier this week, the team confirmed that Kurt Van de Wouwer, another former Lotto Soudal rider, will take on the new position of sports manager.

However, Chmil is ready to take on the CEO job and said he sees parallels between the current predicament and when he joined the team in 1994.

"The team was completely at rock bottom," Chimil told Het Laatste Nieuws." When I left, it was one of the big teams in the peloton."

Chimil insisted that the team "deserves much better" than its recent management, and that the team "has lost its soul in recent years. I want to get that soul back and that's why I want to come to Belgium. I am a patriot. There are people who can run a bicycle factory in my place."

Born in Khabarovsk, near China, and raised in Odesa, Ukraine, Timir was a member of the legendary Alpha Rum, the first Soviet Union team to race professionally in Western Europe in the late 1980s. With three Monument wins and countless lesser victories, Chmir's hard-nosed approach to the sport was described by the now defunct magazine ProCycling as "one of the toughest riders of all time." His most famous victory came at Paris-Roubaix in 1994, when he attacked 60km from the finish line in a snowstorm, not because he thought he could win, but because he wanted to annoy Johan Museeuw, the Belgian Classics star at the time, according to ProCycling magazine. Before Lotto, he raced briefly for the GB-MG team of Patrick Lefebvre, the current director of Evenpoel. His post-racing career has been varied, including serving as Moldova's minister of sports and as team manager of the Katusha cycling team for three years from 2009-11. He then set up a small bicycle factory in the Moldovan capital of Chişinău, where he spends most of the year, but seems ready to play a bigger role in professional cycling again.