Pat McQuaid has moved to slap down Greg LeMond’s bid to take his job from him at the UCI
Pat McQuaid has strongly dismissed a bid by three-time Tour de France winner Greg LeMond to challenge for his position as UCI president, saying the American knew nothing about running cycling and had been missing from the sport for years.
“It is a little bit arrogant of Greg to come along and be used – and he is being used – as a PR stunt,” he said, before adding that he knew LeMond from the 1980s when he was a “good friend”.
However, in an interview with Associated Press, McQuaid strongly rejected LeMond as a credible candidate for the job and used the opportunity to promote his own suitability to continue for a third term as UCI president when his current term expires next September.
Advertisement
”Take away the Armstrong affair, and this has been a wonderful year,” he said of the state of the sport in 2012.
“In all seriousness, this is not the time to be pulling stunts,” he added of the LeMond bid for the top UCI job.
Related News
He said the American “knows nothing” about running cycling.
“The last 25 years, where has he been? Nowhere. Not involved in cycling. He is outside cycling, shouting at it looking in,” McQuaid said.
”We had a big crisis,” he said of the drugs problem in the sport.
“We have a perception problem, I know that, but I don’t see me stepping down is going to change that perception. I need to oversee the action that is going on at the moment.”
McQuaid was reacting to developments of last month when LeMond was asked by the new Change Cycling Now group to run for UCI presidency in a bid to remove McQuaid from the job.
Change Cycling Now includes several long-time anti drugs voices, among them Irish journalists Paul Kimmage and David Walsh.
Topics
