McQuaid: Landis and Hamilton are far from heroes
UCI president Pat McQuaid answers a question during a press conference held during the UCI road world championships in Valkenburg.
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UCI president critical of Kimmage and Hamilton’s confessional books
It was an April 2010 email from Floyd Landis that gave impetus to the twin investigations by the FDA and USADA that ultimately led to Lance Armstrong being stripped of his seven Tour de France titles. After drawing ridicule for his attempts to contest the positive test for testosterone that saw him stripped of the 2006 Tour, Landis’ frank confession and unmasking of the doping culture that pervaded at US Postal saw his reputation rehabilitated in many quarters.
Following his announcement that the UCI would not contest USADA’s reasoned decision on the Armstrong case in Geneva on Monday, however, president Pat McQuaid poured scorn on the apparent lionisation of Landis and his fellow former US Postal Service rider Tyler Hamilton for providing evidence to USADA about the doping system in place at the team.
“Landis started it. He was in a bottomless hole and he said the only way out of it was to bring the sport down. That’s what he intended doing and what he intends doing, but he won’t achieve it,” McQuaid told reporters.
“Another thing that annoys me is that Landis and Hamilton are being made out to be heroes. They are as far from heroes as night and day. They are not heroes, they are scumbags. All they have done is damage the sport.”
McQuaid went on to point out that Hamilton had been summoned to UCI headquarters in Aigle in 2004 to explain suspicious blood values, and had failed to make a truthful disclosure. The American subsequently tested positive for a blood transfusion.
“We called him and he said “the machines are wrong, I’m not doing anything wrong,’” McQuaid said. “He then went positive two or maybe three times and was eventually thrown out of the sport. He spent the next three or four years trying to prove that he had
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