The Cycling Ireland EGM vote in Dublin this afternoon rejecting Pat McQuaid’s nomination to run for the presidency of the UCI took place after a lengthy debate among some of those 188 delegates present from 60 clubs across the country.
What emerged very clearly were the two faces of Cycling Ireland. One was the face of the old guard; most of whom have been organising races and running clubs for decades, many with families steeped in the sport and all linked to racing.
The vast majority of that group who spoke today did so in favour of Pat McQuaid. They would have known him, or known of him, long before he became involved in sports administration, let alone running the UCI.
The second face was that of the new breed; some from clubs that have only been established in the past five to 10 years and perhaps boasting memberships more involved on the leisure side of the sport than with the racing scene.
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The problem for Pat McQuaid today – speaking strictly in electoral terms rather than on the wider issues – was that while he had plenty of the old guard support, the newer members of the cycling community appeared well versed on the Lance Armstrong affair and judging by comments made in the debate, they believed the UCI had not done enough to fight the doping issue generally.
A second issue was that Pat McQuaid and his family were not more successful in mobilising more of the old guard to turn out and vote in his favour today. There were 252 clubs registered with Cycling Ireland to vote and just 60 turned up, meaning a huge number of votes went untapped.
The family is the biggest dynasty in Irish cycling, and - notwithstanding the avalanche of anti Pat McQuaid comment on social media of late and today’s result – they are a popular family in racing circles.
An orchestrated campaign by them – even working the phones over the past week – would have been enough, one would have thought, to get more supporters to the meeting at the Red Cow Inn in west Dublin today.
The meeting voted 74 in favour of granting him the nomination to run for the UCI presidency, with 91 against; a difference of just 17 votes.
With clubs of between six and 20 members having two votes, even mobilising nine of those would have swung it McQuaid’s way. Clubs with between 21 and 50 members had three votes today and others with between 51 and 100 members had four votes. Generating the support of just five of those in the 51 to 100 member category would have carried the day for Pat McQuaid.
However, while that level of support would have once been just a few phone calls away for such a large family steeped in the traditions of Irish bike racing, it appears at least possible that their detachment from the domestic racing scene over the past decade counted against them this afternoon.
There are no McQuaids racing in open races today; a statement that could not have been made for decades before now. And, while not a criticism, it's a fact that means the family's presence on the domestic scene is less in evidence now than before.
While Pat McQuaid is obviously very well known in Ireland, he has been living in Switzerland running the UCI for the best part of a decade.
Despite the very large number of race wins he and his brothers collected over the years, it is one sibling, Darach, who is perhaps best known now. However, like Pat, Darach’s profile is linked to the international scene rather than domestic cycling.
He is behind the visit next year of the Giro d’Italia to Belfast and Dublin and is a consultant for the World Championships in Richmond in the US in 2015; two laudable achievements but ones that do not give him any influence or real profile on the domestic racing scene.
Pat’s sons Andrew and David are well known domestically and are well liked. But Andrew has been working as a cycling agent abroad in recent years. And while David has retail and wholesale interests in the bike game in Dublin and also is at the helm of the new Synergy Baku Continental team – backed by Azerbaijani interests – that latter project is again on an international stage rather than on the home scene.
So it appears the family’s drift over time from the domestic scene into international projects has meant they simply were not in a position to muster the support today that they would have attracted even a decade ago with ease and would have seen Pat McQuaid get over the line at the EGM.
Massively symbolic today was the presence of members of Emerald CC – including at least three of the McQuaids. The family established the club and is synonymous with it. However, Emerald was not eligible to vote today; apparently because it did not have the required numbers officially registered for long enough to secure a vote. It meant the family’s own vote wasn’t even recorded at the EGM; a fact that would astonish anybody who knows them and underlines the fact that all politics truly is local.
The debate today was a reasoned one. It was calm and some good points were made so we have put together a summary for you:
Paul Watson, a well known commissaire on the domestic scene who has broken through internationally in recent years, was perhaps the most forceful speaker to favour McQuaid.
He said he had been involved in the sport some 35 years and was firmly of the view that there was “more to cycling than Lance Armstrong”. The reality was Pat McQuaid had done a lot of positive work for cycling, and not just on the doping front.
“Many journalists just want to make this a doping issue because good stories don’t sell newspapers. Yes, we have a doping issue but doesn’t ever professional sport?”
It was time soccer and tennis and other sports faced their problems.
Aside from doping, Watson said McQuaid had developed cycling in parts of the world where the sport had never been pushed in the period before the Irishman was UCI president
“I ask the people who are speaking against him, how many times have they been outside Ireland and seen (McQuaid) flying the flag for Ireland, the UCI and Cycling Ireland?”
As an Irishman, Watson said he had been greeted very warmly and with great respect on the international races he had worked on, many in nations that previously had no cycling tradition. He believed this was, at least in part, because of the influence of McQuaid. Even in countries such as Rwanda where he had been, “the kids there want to be cyclists now”.
PJ Nolan from Navan Road Club was another speaker. He is a former president of Cycling Ireland, having held that role from 2001 to 2004 and he was supportive of McQuaid.
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He said while McQuaid’s personal style was not liked by everyone, the UCI president was “a doer, he doesn’t hide behind convention”. Long before taking on his current role he had organised races like the Nissan Classic and Kellogg’s races that had “inspired a lot of people”.
He added longer bans for dopers, up to life time bans, needed to be introduced. It was only when the bans were greatly increased that the stigma attached to doping would become so great that most of those tempted to do it would not take the chance.
He suggested a similar changed culture had been brought about in Ireland in recent years relating to drink driving.
“I would be in favour of Pat McQuaid going forward for election with that condition around longer bans (being introduced),” he said.
Pat O’Shaughnessy of Cuchulainn CC was also supportive of McQuaid, saying the sport was cleaner now than it was eight years ago when he first became president. He noted a number of high profile riders, including Ireland’s Dan Martin, had said repeatedly they believed the sport was cleaner now.
In reference to the fact that British Cycling president Brian Cookson had entered the race to become UCI president, O’Shaughnessy said he would prefer not to “open the door” to a British candidate “with the backing of a multi billionaire Russian”.
“It’s better with the devil we know rather than the one we don’t,” he said.
Tadhg Sheehan of Dublin University CC said a number of changes had recently been introduced to mountain biking by the UCI. While he did not outline what those changes were, he said they were unhelpful to the code.
Because of that, he was not supportive of Cycling Ireland members nominating McQuaid to fight an election for a third term at the top of the UCI.
Brian Kilbride, representing St Tiernan’s CC in south Dublin, said his club had held a vote on the issue which was overwhelming in its opposition to nominating McQuaid to go forward to contest the election on the back of a Cycling Ireland nomination.
“If there is going to be any kind of change there needs to be a complete break from the past. Unfortunately the only way to do that is for Pat McQuaid to be no longer involved in the UCI.”
Gabriel Howard of Stamullen noted when the Cycling Ireland AGM had taken place in the off season to discuss the general issues arising in the sport, just over 20 clubs were represented. Yet there were 60 clubs in attendance at the EGM today.
“There’s people here that I never saw at a bike race,” he said.
When McQuaid had become president of Cycling Ireland in the 1990s, Howard said it was he who put him forward and that he had had his life threatened as a result.
He added when track rider Harry Reynolds won his world title in 1896 he had refused to stand and listen to the British national anthem at the medal presentation. People who voted against McQuaid at the EGM would be “stabbing Harry Reynolds in the heart”.
“I would ask the people here today to stand by an Irishman,” he said.
Barry Redmond acknowledged the issue of doping had improved within the sport under McQuaid but he did not credit the UCI president with that reform.
“It has improved, not because of Pat McQuaid but despite him,” he told the EGM.
He believed McQuaid was a person who took credit for the achievements of others and was also a man who repeatedly made comments that contradicted his utterances on the same issues in the past.
Tomás Crowley from The Chain Gang CC based in Tralee said McQuaid’s approach towards problems that arose in the sport was “reactive, not proactive”. His efforts to secure a nomination from Swiss Cycling were typical of this reactive approach.
Another delegate, speaking in a personal capacity, Marc Gill described as “disrespectful” McQuaid’s approach to the Swiss once it became clear Cycling Ireland was to hold an EGM on the nomination rather than allow the board of the association decide.
Eddie Keogh, a well known figure in racing circles and a former Cycling Ireland board member and current UCI anti doping officer, spoke in support of McQuaid.
He said when he had taken office, he set about changing the system whereby anti doping officers who were known to many of the riders were testing those same riders after races.
He said McQuaid recognised that those relationships could be too cosy and that he had “thrown out cronies” and had taken on officials from the big European federations in that regard.
It was clear to him, even looking at pro races, that riders were really suffering again and that doping was not as big a factor as before. Keogh added that another UCI anti doping official from Ireland – Declan Byrne, who organised last year’s National Championships – had recently spent 10 days on the Giro d’Italia.
“He told me that the riders were coming in from the stages like the county riders on the Rás; they were wrecked, they had been suffering.”
Cycling Ireland’s honorary secretary, Jack Watson rounded off the debate saying the “anti Pat McQuaid brigade” had been criticising him and “playing their cards” against him without offering up any ideas of their own about how the sport should be run.
He said some people believed a cultural change was needed in the UCI but the reality was that even if that were true, removing one man from any organisation would never change a culture.
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