The Cycling Ireland board member and vice president, Anto Moran has said he voted against the federation nominating Pat McQuaid for election for a third term as UCI president because he had lost faith in the UCI and professional cycling.
He believed somebody needed to be held accountable for events in the sport that had caused many cyclists and fans to lose confidence and he believed that person was Pat McQuaid. As reported earlier today on stickybottle, Moran has now resigned from the board over the issue.
He was the only one of the seven voting members of the board to vote against McQuaid’s nomination to run for president again when the board voted at a meeting in Dublin last Friday night.
“I’ve been absolutely inundated with emails and texts and all kinds of messages; and it’s been from all over the world, not just Ireland. I’ve had people like Betsy Andreu even getting in contact," Moran told stickybottle today.
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“Ironically, you could say it was Pat McQuaid who first got me into cycling. I remember seeing the Nissan Classics and then getting involved at that time. I really want to stress that me voting against him being nominated is nothing personal, it really isn’t.”
“But ultimately in any organisation, whether you are talking corporate or sporting or whatever area, the buck has to stop at the top and when things go wrong the people at the top have to be held accountable. Unfortunately in this case, that’s an Irishman called Pat McQuaid.”
Moran has been a good racing cyclist on the domestic scene and has won many races in a career that continues to this day despite being in his veteran years now. He has given years of his time to build up the Finglas Ravens club in Dublin, with the help of others in that club including Richie and Bernie McCormack and their father John, who is now deceased.
A civil servant from Dublin, Moran is a popular figure with racing cyclists and would be seen as being in touch with the grass roots of the sport.
He said he was very concerned at the role the UCI had played under McQuaid’s presidency in letting Lance Armstrong return to the sport in 2009 and effectively giving him an exemption to the rule stating a rider must be in a testing programme for six months before returning.
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“What message is the sport sending out by doing something like that?” he said.
“We know now that there were suspicions about his tests from the early 2000's, yet he is welcomed back in 2009 as being good for the sport.”
He also said the continued role of Hein Verbruggen as honorary president of the UCI was a concern for him and he believed many cyclists and fans shared his concerns.
“The UCI will tell you that it’s only an honorary role. But it doesn’t matter. What is Hein Verbruggen still doing there at all? I just cannot get my head around that.”
He added Verbruggen had been president of the UCI during a period of what we now know was very significant drug taking, including Lance Armstrong’s most prolific section of his career, the Festina affair and others major events.
“He also said things like Lance Armstrong never, never, never doped and that he was a friend of his and so on.”
Moran added that the deterioration in the relationship between the UCI on the one side and WADA and USADA on the other was something the UCI, and especially McQuaid, should have handled better. He believed the acrimony between the agencies was not aiding the fight against doping and , for him, McQuaid’s performance in that regard was not up to the standard he expected.
“You also have the independent commission that was supposed to happen to have a look at all of the issues around the UCI. Cycling Ireland was going to wait and see what that said (about McQuaid's and the UCI’s handling of doping during the Armstrong era) and then decide on the nomination. But that commission isn’t happening now and that was another thing I wasn’t happy about.”
“Having said all of that, if Pat McQuaid gets back in and does a great job and cleans up cycling, I will be the first to doff my cap to him. It genuinely is nothing personal but we simply have to have accountability.”
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