The Brian Cookson effect? Elected in September 2013 at the head of the International Cycling Union (UCI), the Briton promised a new era for cycling, much more transparent. He is keeping his word. The independent commission of inquiry for cycling reform (CIRC) set up on his initiative, in order to find out the truth about the practices of the discipline, its past and its embezzlement, made its report public on Sunday night. see you Monday. A 227-page report drawn up by its three members, the Swiss Dick Marty (former prosecutor of Ticino), the Australian Peter Nicholson (former advisor to the German government), and the German Ulrich Haas (arbitrator at the Court of Arbitration for Sport).
In itself, the approach marks a profound change. It is not so common to see an international federation wanting to investigate its past and its excesses. And even less often that she agrees to publish all the details. The pitiful series of the Garcia report, commissioned by FIFA to investigate the conditions for awarding the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, demonstrated that courage was not often the first quality of sports leaders.
What does the UCI report contain? Let's be honest, there is a serious lack of real revelations. But it has the merit of drawing up a very documented incriminating picture of the close proximity of the former UCI leaders with the American Lance Armstrong, former seven-time winner of the Tour de France. “The UCI saw him as the ideal choice for the rebirth of this sport after the Festina scandal,” believes the CIRC. Clearly, the Texan's arrival at the top of world cycling was welcomed as a godsend by the UCI, convinced that its audience and revenues would be boosted by his performances.
Lance Armstrong would therefore have benefited, according to the report, from preferential treatment from the UCI. The rules applied to others, not to him. He had, for example, the possibility of appealing in 2009 in Australia a few days in advance of the rules. “The UCI management did not know the difference between the hero Armstrong, the seven-time Tour winner, cancer survivor and role model for thousands of fans, and the rider Armstrong, endowed with the same rights and obligations as any other professional cyclist », concluded the report.
“There was a tacit exchange of favors between the leaders of the UCI and Lance Armstrong and they presented a common front against anyone who dared attack him,” continues the CIRC. The UCI adopted a defensive stance as if every attack on Armstrong was an attack on cycling and the UCI. »
The three investigators mandated by the UCI interviewed a respectable total of 13 witnesses in 174 months. Among them, Lance Armstrong, Alexander Vinokourov and Christopher Froome. One witness in four belongs to UCI staff, 15% of those interviewed are current or former riders. What emerges is a particularly disastrous assessment of the governance of world cycling by its two former presidents, the Dutchman Hein Verbruggen and his successor, the Irishman Pat McQuaid.
The CIRC condemns the policy pursued until 2006. It describes it as "insufficient", because it is mainly concerned with image and focused on a quantitative approach. Subsequently, the report acknowledges, the period was “marked by constant improvements and a growing desire to fight doping at its roots”. McQuaid would therefore have been less worse than Verbruggen, but without really deserving the praise. He is described as a “weak leader” by witnesses from the UCI, still under the strong influence of Hein Verbruggen.
In the absence of scoops, the CIRC report is surprising in its frankness when it addresses the question of the present. Certainly, it highlights the progress made and the desire of many stakeholders to make a clean sweep of the past and start again on healthier bases. But the UCI investigators also do not hesitate to write down doping in black and white. has not disappeared from the peloton. “Doping and cheating remain evident in the peloton, although they are probably no longer as endemic as in the past,” the report points out. The CIRC considers that a culture of doping continues to exist in cycling. » She notes in particular “inexplicable” weight losses among certain runners. And it ensures that current dopers use microdosing that is sufficiently controlled to slip through the cracks of the controls.
