Sean Kelly (left) and Pat McQuaid (right) at the launch of the Sean Kelly team in its early days. In the middle is Andrew McQuaid, Pat’s son – then a rider with the team and now a cycling agent.
Former world number 1 and current principal of the An Post team, Ireland’s Sean Kelly has described as “horrific” the evidence that has emerged about doping by Lance Armstrong and the US Postal Team.
But he believes the UCI’s battle against doping is thriving under the presidency of Pat McQuaid, who he said had “changed totally” the doping culture in world cycling.
When asked during an interview with RTE Radio 1 yesterday, Thursday, for his reaction to the revelations about Armstrong and many of his former team mates, Kelly said:
“Well, I think it was something over the last number of months, weeks; we were waiting for this and it was pretty much expected. But it’s horrific, what we’re hearing over the last number of hours.”
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“And now we know that it was organised within the team; the doping at the time with Lance Armstrong and the other team mates. It was a time in cycling when it was… being done, they were all doing it. It wasn’t the only team, I would believe.”
However, he felt strongly that things had changed since McQuaid had taken over at the helm of the UCI.
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“I suppose one of the things we can take from it is since we have our new (UCI) president Pat McQuaid things have changed totally. Because in cycling now with the (biological) passport we’ve got, I think in the last number of years cycling is cleaned up a lot. And we see the number of riders they have taken (out) in the last six or eight years, ten years; you know, they’re catching all the big names. So that is a good thing we’ve taken from that.”
When it was put to him that there had been “calls for heads to roll within the UCI” and that Armstrong had gotten away with drug taking for a very long time and wasn’t the only one to do so, Kelly said:
“Well, that is the amazing thing; they can get away with it. When you look at cycling, you look at the Tour de France and all the events, the number of controls they have got there; it’s one of the sports which I believe has the most number of anti-doping controls in competition. And it’s amazing that they were able to get through that without any problems.”
On the specific question as to whether there needed to be changes in personnel at the top of the UCI, Kelly said:
“I suppose Pat McQuaid, he’s the man that has taken the roll; he’s in there is it six years, five or six years now, maybe a bit more? And he has turned things around. Because, as I said, if you look back on the last number of years; the names, and big names, they have taken out of the sport, it’s amazing and that’s something I think we have to credit McQuaid for because it was before the time of McQuaid.”
“When he came in there, the problem was there. But it took a long time to clean it up but I believe it is cleaned up a lot. With the passport now, things are looking much better. But certainly, once again, real bad news for cycling and they were the real, real bad years of cycling in that era.”
RTE said it had requested an interview with McQuaid but the UCI president said he needed to study the report from USADA to the UCI on Lance Armstrong before he could comment.
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