UCI in-fighting clouds build-up to world champs
MADRID (Reuters) - The build-up to this week's world cycling
championships in Madrid threatens being overshadowed by a bitter power
struggle inside the sport's governing body, the International Cycling Union
(UCI).
Accusations of electoral irregularities, a round of mutual
recriminations and a flurry of legal action have preceded the vote for the
UCI presidency which is due to take place next Friday during the world
championships.
Incumbent president Hein Verbruggen, who has been in charge of
the body since 1993, is facing opposition from dissident members of the UCI
to try to ensure that he does not win a fourth term in office.
Verbruggen and Irish candidate Pat McQuaid have announced that
they had begun legal proceedings against UCI management committee member
Sylvia Schenk of Germany for defamation.
At the same time the UCI has accused Schenk of pursuing a "witch
hunt" against them, saying at the end of a lengthy media release on their
website that they have always acted with the "utmost transparency."
The website says the UCI has been subjected for several months
to "repeated and apparently systematically organized attacks" coming from "a
small number of ill-intentioned individuals who are conducting a genuine
campaign to destabilize the UCI by skillfully exploiting the grandstand
willingly offered by certain press organizations clearly more interested in
sensation than truth."
OLYMPIC RUNNER
Schenk, 52, ran ninth in the women's 800 metres at the 1972
Olympics in Munich and is a former president of the German Cycling
Federation.
The conflict took a further twist at the weekend when the
Spanish Cycling Federation (RFEC), who are supporting their own candidate
Gregorio Moreno for the presidency, announced that they had started legal
action against Verbruggen in an attempt to unseat the 64-year-old Dutchman
as head of the congress that will preside over next Friday's elections.
The Spanish Federation argues that Verbruggen should not
continue as president because of what it calls "manipulation of the
electoral process" to choose his successor.
It justifies its decision to resort to legal action by a desire
to "ensure the elections are impartial."
As well as Verbruggen, McQuaid and Moreno, Malaysian Darshan
Singh, who is also in dispute with the UCI, is also standing for the
presidency.
Singh, a former member of the UCI management committee, is at
loggerheads with the organization because of his objection to the results of
the elections for the presidency of the Asian Cycling Confederation which he
lost in March 2005.
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