Efforts to organise a vote of no confidence in UCI president Pat McQuaid are to be discussed at Cycling Ireland’s AGM in Clonmel, Co Tipperary, tomorrow, Saturday.
While a vote will not be put to delegates on the day, the meeting will hear calls for an EGM to be organised in coming weeks in order that such a vote can be put to the floor.
The matter is being pursued by Dr Conor McGrane, the official doctor to Cycling Ireland. However, he is raising the issue in a personal capacity. His concerns centre around the UCI’s approach to the doping issue and specifically relate to its approach to the Lance Armstrong case.
Originally McGrane’s club Swords CC had planned to submit a motion to Cycling Ireland which would have seen a vote of no confidence in McQuaid put to delegates tomorrow.
Advertisement
However, the deadline for AGM motions was October 5th, by which time the US Anti-Doping Agency’s (USADA) report on Armstrong had not been made public and the UCI’s and World Anti-Doping Agency’s (WADA) responses were not known.
McGrane felt because those details were not public before the Cycling Ireland submissions deadline, a motion of no-confidence in McQuaid could not be submitted.
However, after tomorrow’s morning session at the AGM there will be time for delegates to raise ‘any other business’.
McGrane told stickybottle he intends to use that opportunity to voice his concerns about the UCI’s handling of doping. And from the floor he will also call on Cycling Ireland to organise an EGM in the weeks ahead in order that a motion of no confidence in McQuaid would be put to delegates.
McGrane said it was unclear if a decision on the holding of an EGM would be made tomorrow or if was something the Cycling Ireland board would need to discuss and relay its decision at a later date.
Even if there is no decision tomorrow, he expects one in “a couple of weeks”.
Related News
“I’m raising this because while I don’t think the UCI has been pro doping, I don’t think they have pursued the issue as hard as they could have,” he told stickybottle.
“For me as a doctor it’s about the health of the riders and not putting them in a culture where doping is likely. Riders have damaged their health and some of them have died.”
He said while McQuaid had not been president of the UCI during any of Lance Armstrong’s now void Tour de France wins, he had become president by the time Armstrong returned to the sport.
An exemption was made for Armstrong to come back at the start of the 2009 season despite his not having been within the dope testing regime for six months before such as return, as per UCI rules. McGrane believes that was a serious error.
He also pointed out that McQuaid had been vice president of the UCI during Hein Verbruggen’s last four years in charge, when Armstrong won four of his now void Tour de France crowns. He noted McQuaid had been a senior figure in the organisation from 1998, as chairman of the road commission.
McGrane also feels the UCI made statements in recent months that were critical of both USADA and WADA at a time when the Armstrong investigation was at a crucial stage. He did not think this was helpful in the fight against doping.
Any vote of no confidence passed by his home federation at an EGM in the weeks ahead would be a cause of major embarrassment for McQuaid, though would not force him to resign.
It would however make it very difficult for the board of Cycling Ireland to nominate McQuaid for a third term as UCI president, though it is not known if he will seek a third term.
The federation nominated him in 2005 for his first four-year term and again nominated him in 2009 for his second four-year term.
McQuaid’s current term as president is in its last year and will expire next September. Every president of the UCI to date has been nominated for election by his home federation and any failure on McQuaid’s part to achieve that should he opt for a third term would be very embarrassing.
Topics
