Riders call for UCI to launch reforms
UCI President Pat McQuaid stepped out of the shadows to face the media
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Demands for stronger anti-doping measures being voiced
Ahead of the UCI’s management committee meeting scheduled for Friday afternoon, and following the sport’s greatest doping case around Lance Armstrong, calls within the peloton for the managing body of cycling to launch reforms and stronger anti-doping measures have been growing louder.
On Thursday, the president of the Royal Dutch Cycling Federation (KNWU), Marcel J.G. Wintels, appealled to the UCI to let an “authoritative, independent, international truth and inquiry committee” examine the sport’s anti-doping efforts. On the same day, former cyclist Greg LeMond went so far as to demand Pat McQuaid’s resignation, alleging the head of the UCI knew “damn well what has been going on in cycling”, and calling him “the epitome of the word corruption”.
The rider’s association CPA has also sent out a letter to McQuaid and the media, targeting not the UCI, but demanding that the managers and team staff that have been involved in doping affairs be excluded from the sport. “The riders demand that the whole [Armstrong] dossier be investigated and that all those who are guilty be named. Too often, only the riders implicated in doping scandals have been punished. The time has come for all those who work in the cycling world who have faulted be prosecuted in the same way,” stated Gianni Bugno, head of the association, pointing at certain managers and team doctors who continue to work in pro cycling despite their illicit past.
In its Friday paper edition, L’Equipe has gathered several proposals on what consequences the UCI should draw from the affair. Many actors of the sport are hoping for a set of reforms that would give cycling back some credibility at a time when major sponsors such as Rabobank are turning their backs on bike racing.
Nicolas Roche (AG2R La Mondiale) demands that riders guilty of doping should be banned for longer
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