UCI president Pat McQuaid has insisted his decision to sue Paul Kimmage for libel has nothing to do with the Lance Armstrong affair and is in no way connected to the journalist and author’s strong anti-doping stance.
McQuaid said Kimmage had called him and the UCI corrupt and that he could not let that pass without challenge. A libel case is scheduled for December in Switzerland.
“Let me separate the Lance Armstrong affair and the USADA affair from Paul Kimmage because they are two separate things,” McQuaid said.
“Paul Kimmage and (sports journalist) David Walsh have done a very good job in Ireland of linking the two. But in actual fact they are completely separate. Paul Kimmage was informed by me and the UCI last January about this because of a statement he made where he called me corrupt and he called the UCI corrupt.”
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McQuaid said he felt those remarks were libellous and he would not accept them.
“This is nothing to do with Paul Kimmage, writer of ‘Rough Ride’. This is nothing to do with Paul Kimmage anti doping advocate. This is nothing to do with the Paul Kimmage that I knew very well as a cyclist. This is to do with a journalist who went over the line and who called me corrupt. And I will no accept that on my behalf nor on my family’s behalf, who are living in Ireland.”
He said nowhere in the USADA report into Lance Armstrong and his US Postal Service/Discovery team was corruption suggested on the part of the UCI.
He made his remarks in an interview with broadcaster Pat Kenny on RTE Radio 1.
On the question of doping, McQuaid said the UCI had limited tools to fight doping in previous years – including Lance Armstrong’s peak period - though he insisted when there was a positive test, the governing body sanctioned riders.
He claimed that with the biological passport now and the use of blood values to indicate suspected drug taking, the UCI was better equipped.
“What happened in the Armstrong era would not happen today,” he said.
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“The real fans know exactly what cycling does in the fight against doping. The real fans know there are other sports out there that are a lot worse than cycling but the focus is not on them.”
When asked about former president of the World Anti-Doping Agency Dick Pound saying it was not credible that the UCI did not know about Armstrong’s drug taking during his career, McQuaid said:
“That’s his opinion. WADA weren’t around in those days. Let’s face it; the UCI tested Lance Armstrong 218 times. USADA, on their website they state they tested him 52 times. WADA themselves tested him on many occasions. Now, all of those results were negative.”
McQuaid repeated that it was the US police, with their police powers, that got the statements from witnesses that combined in large part to make the case against Armstrong.
He insisted the UCI did investigate rumours and reports of drug taking, but without police powers much of the information was little more than hearsay.
When asked about the ethics of accepting donations for drug testing equipment from Armstrong in 2002 and then 2005 – both after he had returned the 2001 sample classified as suspect for drug taking - McQuaid said in hindsight the UCI may have been wiser not to do that.
However, the UCI’s anti doping programme cost €7.5 million per annum and currently teams all paid €120,000 into that fund while riders paid a percentage of their prize money.
He then suggested that athletes in other sports donating money were not viewed with suspicion.
“What, for instance, if Robbie Keane came along to the FAI and said ‘I want to give €1million from all of my transfers to set up a schoolboy football scheme up in Tallaght’. Would the FAI be wrong to take that?”
McQuaid said many people, especially in Ireland, had tried to link the suspect Armstrong test in the Tour de Suisse in 2001 and the subsequent donations. However, he said there was no link and that the UCI president at that time Hein Verbruggen had done nothing wrong.
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