UCI president Pat McQuaid in Paris at the 2011 Tour de France. (Daniel McMahon/Bicycling.com)
The world championships turn into a rough ride for Hein and Pat.
By Joe Lindsey
Much of the talk in American news cycles last week was about presidential candidate Mitt Romney and his series of mostly self-inflicted wounds. But he wasn’t the worst off. Cycling’s heads of state, unable to avoid the press at the recent world championships, proved so gaffe-prone there I wouldn’t hand them a set of child safety scissors.
At an event that provides roughly a quarter of its annual budget, these guys still managed to have a bad time.
UCI president Pat McQuaid and his predecessor, Hein Verbruggen (now with the International Olympic Committee), appear unable or unwilling to recognize that they’re in a crisis that threatens not only themselves but the UCI itself.
At worlds, Cyclingnews.com’s managing editor, Daniel Benson, approached Hein Verbruggen with a series of very rational questions. Verbruggen’s response was to get progressively angrier and make even less sense than normal. I’d characterize it, but you really need to read Benson’s piece to get the whole flavor of the exchange.
McQuaid, at a press conference, was his usual blustery self. David Millar, taking a temporary career shift to work as a commentator for the BBC, asked McQuaid if the UCI had any apologies to make for its role during the time when doping became epidemic in the sport.
“No. How could we be apologetic?” McQuaid responded. “The UCI is not responsible for the culture of doping in the sport.”
Afterward, Millar responded to reporters’ questions, saying that the UCI “don’t seem to accept any responsibility for the last 15 years,” and that they were failing to show the leadership that cycling needed to move forward.
All of this played out on a backdrop of McQuaid and Verbruggen’s continuing defamation lawsuit against Irish journalist Paul Kimmage.
A crowdfunding site, set up by Cyclismas.com and NY Velocity, has so far received more than $23,000 in donations to help the former Sunday Times sportswriter defend himself in Swiss civil court. And fans and journalists hammered the sport’s two grandees on the perception that the suit seemed calculated against Kimmage alone (a longtime critic of both men), even as others have made similar accusations and not been sued.
Case in point: At least three times in the past 18 months, I’ve written pieces that raised similar points to the substance of Kimmage’s comments. I’ve yet to be informed of any legal action.
Also relevant: McQuaid and Verbruggen aren’t suing any of the publications involved, and they’re not suing Dan Coyle or Tyler Hamilton either, just Kimmage and the man he quoted, Floyd Landis.
At the same time, L’Equipe‘s Damien Ressiot published an interview with USADA’s CEO, Travis Tygart, that leaves little doubt how that organization feels about the strength of its case against Lance Armstrong, Johan Bruyneel, and others involved in doping on U.S. Postal Service.
USADA plans to publish a complete case file by the end of the year, and if accusations by Floyd Landis and Tyler Hamilton are backed up elsewhere, that could include damaging evidence of the UCI’s complicity in covering up positive tests by Armstrong.
McQuaid and Verbruggen have dug in to their positions. Not only will they not genuinely respond to thoughtful questions about the UCI’s role in the hot mess that was pro cycling for the past 20 or so years, they also don’t even recognize the legitimacy of the questions.
After Romney’s “47 percent” comments were published, the New York Times‘ David Brooks (no bleeding-heart liberal, he) suggested they made Romney resemble the clueless, ascot-wearing plutocrat Thurston Howell from Gilligan’s Island. It was an image not helped by his comment Saturday that he didn’t know why airplane windows don’t open (a cockpit fire forced his wife’s plane to make an emergency landing the day before.)
This past weekend, Verbruggen and McQuaid looked similarly out of touch. Keep it up, and both the skipper and his little buddy could shortly be marooned.