A landmark report into cycling's troubled recent history revealed that the sport "continues to struggle with widespread doping," according to Matt Slater of the BBC. Set up last January "to investigate how cycling so badly lost its way during the 1990s and 2000s, the Cycling Independent Reform Commission (Circ) has heavily criticised the sport's leadership throughout that era." Its 227-page report, published on Monday, clears the Int'l Cycling Union's (UCI) bosses "of outright corruption but censures them for a litany of failings." Foremost among these are that "the UCI did not really want to catch cheats and therefore turned a blind eye to anything but the worst excesses." The report's authors also accuse former UCI Presidents Hein Verbruggen and Pat McQuaid "of failing to follow their own anti-doping rules and showing preferential treatment to disgraced former champion Lance Armstrong." UCI President Brian Cookson, who swept into office in '13 promising a "fresh start for an organization that had been badly damaged" by its close links to Armstrong, "thanked the panel for its work and did not try to sugar-coat its findings." The report "explains how a sport that had always taken a lenient approach to doping, and had an entrenched, Mafia-like culture of 'omerta' when it came to not talking about doping," entered a new phase when the "game-changing" blood-boosting drug EPO became readily available in the early '90s. With no test for it until '00 and performance benefits of 10-15%, it "did not take long before almost everybody in the sport was using it." As the report says, "it would have been hard to overestimate the prevalence of drug use in the peloton" at this time (BBC, 3/8).
VERBRUGGEN ASKED TO RESIGN: In London, William Fotheringham wrote Cookson called upon his predecessor Verbruggen to resign from his "current status as the UCI’s honorary president." Cookson: "I am very concerned by what I read in the report about Hein’s actions and I will write to him asking him to consider his position as honorary president." He added that, in his view, Verbruggen had placed the business side of the sport above its integrity and made "serious errors of judgment and wrong decisions." Cookson said that "Verbruggen had the power to resign." Cookson: "We will see what emerges." Verbruggen responded with a statement on Monday, saying, "I have studied the CIRC report and I am satisfied that it confirms what I have always said: that there have never been any cover-ups, complicity or corruption in the Lance Armstrong case" (GUARDIAN, 3/9). Also in London, Josh Burrows wrote McQuaid said that "he is proud of his legacy as UCI president" despite the independent report alleging that the governing body was "partially responsible for failing to control drug use among elite cyclists around the turn of the century." McQuaid took over from Verbruggen as president of the UCI in '06 and served until '13, when he was deposed by Cookson, the incumbent, "who commissioned the CIRC report that was based on 174 interviews with riders and those connected with the sport." Defending himself against Monday's allegations, McQuaid said, "When I took over as president of the UCI, one of my main aims was to fight against doping. Everybody knows that, and everybody knows the work that I have done in the fight against doping, and UCI is now one of the leading international federations in the fight against doping, and the legacy I have left behind there, I am quite proud of" (LONDON TIMES, 3/9).
ARMSTRONG SCANDAL: In London, Aglionby & Hughes wrote the CIRC concluded in its report that the UCI “took decisions because they were favourable” to Armstrong even though it was “in circumstances where there was strong reason to suspect him of doping, which should have led UCI to be more circumspect in its dealings with him.” The commission said, “UCI exempted Lance Armstrong from rules, failed to target test him despite the suspicions, and publicly supported him against allegations of doping, even as late as 2012 when UCI threatened to challenge the US Anti-Doping Agency’s jurisdiction.” Since '08, cycling "has stepped up its efforts to fight doping, in particular with the introduction of the biological passport." This, a regular series of tests, aims to establish each athlete’s individual physiological parameters "to help detect when their blood values are unusual." As the commission report noted, however, dopers "have responded by microdosing -- taking smaller doses of drugs more often to help limit the window of time they can test positive and to help establish false parameters for the passport" (FINANCIAL TIMES, 3/9). REUTERS' Julien Pretot wrote Cookson said that Armstrong "would not have won seven Tour de France titles without receiving favorable treatment" from the UCI. Cookson: "The style of leadership is pretty much criticized in the report and led to major errors." He added that the UCI was "trying to control and limit rather than eliminate (the problem) completely and at the time they always put the image and the business of the sport before integrity, transparency and honesty" (REUTERS, 3/9). In Sydney, Michael Owen wrote just three weeks after the South Australian government defended its decision to bring Lance Armstrong to Adelaide for three Tour Down Under events, "an independent inquiry has found he was paid an annual appearance fee" of $1M. The CIRC report "also found Armstrong should not have been allowed to make his comeback at the 2009 Tour Down Under because he had not been available for drug testing for the previous six months." The report mentions “significant political pressure” from Australia and discussions between race organizers, Armstrong and the UCI in allowing him to race (THE AUSTRALIAN, 3/10).
'HEARTS AND MINDS': In a separate piece, Fotheringham wrote former professional cyclist David Millar "expressed grave concerns about the report." Millar said that "he was worried that the report’s findings on doping" did not accurately reflect the situation as he knew it, and that it was based on “false consensus.” Millar: "Anti-doping is not just about analytical science but hearts and minds and they have just lost a lot of hearts and minds in the professional peloton -- again. They have shown zero empathy for the clean athletes, who are the ones they have to protect. This will cast a big cloud over a generation of new riders." Millar added that "he felt the commission had not reached out to cyclists who were actually racing today, and that he feared that much of the evidence of contemporary cycling might be inaccurate and out of date, having come from drug takers who had testified in order to get their bans cut." The report "was unable to say precisely what the current state of health of cycling is, although it stated that it had not heard from anyone credible who would say the sport was clean." It stated that "one respected cycling professional felt that even today, 90% of the peloton was doping." Another put it at "around 20%" (GUARDIAN, 3/9).
