The Golden Ostrich Award. Brillant! Why can't the UCI admit its mistakes? Who is McQuaid trying to fool?
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McQuaid calls on those involved in running the sport to work together in tackling the problem of doping, saying that it is not a time to try to score political points. Earlier this month he, Tour de France director Christian Prudhomme and Patrick Lefevere of the AIGCP met in Moudon, Switzerland to agree on an anti-doping accord.
At the time, Prudhomme was quoted as saying, "I would not use the term 'historic' but it is a very important date. We can afford to disagree on all issues except this one."
However, despite that undertaking to work together in unison on the problem, he recently criticised the UCI and put a strain on the agreement. Speaking at the Giro d’Italia, he referred to "the end of an hypocritical system put in place back at the end of the 90's when a miserable cycling was run by Hein Verbruggen, the UCI president at the time".
Prudhomme also told the Associated Press that he considered the UCI partly responsible for the doping crisis. “There is an old culture of doping in cycling. What we need today is to break the system. I think that for years the UCI wanted to build a system which was based on economic arguments, and that's one of the reasons for the current crisis."
He suggested that the UCI deserved a "Golden Ostrich" award for hiding its head in the sand for so many years.
McQuaid pointed out to Cyclingnews that he considers such statements to be both inaccurate and unhelpful to the current fight against doping.
“I was very annoyed and completely, utterly reject the statement of Christian Prudhomme yesterday that the UCI should be awarded this ‘golden ostrich award’ he spoke about. The fact is that in the 90s, cycling is best judged on the Festina affair of that time.
“The judge in the Festina case initially said that the UCI, the French federation and what was then the Société du Tour de France were complicit in the whole doping regime, that they were aware of what was going on and did nothing about it.”
McQuaid was making a reference to the decision of the Court of Lille, which rejected the claims for damages applied for by the UCI, the FFC and the Société du Tour de France. In that judgement, the three parties were faulted. The judge said that each had known about the problem but were slow to act, continuing to run races that they knew were seriously tainted by doping. He also said that as a former racing cyclist and a journalist, that Jean-Marie Leblanc was “not unaware of the endemic nature which the phenomenon [doping] had had for more than three decades at least.”
While all three parties were initially faulted, McQuaid pointed out that this decision was later reversed. “We appealed it, as did the French federation, and we both won the appeal. It was only a symbolic award, I think it was one franc, but the fact is we won the appeal.”
[On March 5th 2002 the Court of Appeals in Douai ruled that the UCI was actively looking for new and reliable detecting methods in order to initiate disciplinary actions, and that it had participated in research on doping substances and their effect on the organism of the riders.]
“The thing about it is that the Société du Tour de France did not appeal that decision so the records in France actually show that they are complicit in doping. For Christian Prudhomme to turn around and say that the UCI was only interested in the economic development and had their heads in the sand [as regards doping] is completely wrong.
“I am particularly surprised with this, given that with the current situation and what is going on at the moment, it is not the time to try and score points or to throw dirt on other people's faces. Especially so because under the Moudon agreement we all agreed to work together on this. It is not the right attitude to have and I am surprised that he should take that line. He’s openly criticised my predecessor; I could then turn around and criticise his own predecessor. But it is not my nature, it is not what I want to do. I do however completely reject what he said.”
“Bear in mind, he is talking about the nineties when EPO was heavily in use. During that time, as was stated in the appeal, the UCI put money into research trying to find a test for EPO. Because we were dealing with something which there was no test for at the time, we introduced the blood controls. They were in 1997 when the blood tests were started, the year after Bjarne Riis won the Tour, and as soon as the EPO test has ratified we used it at the start of the 2001 season, in the Tour of Flanders. So that isn't the actions of people who have got their heads in the sand.”
