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Year-End Update from UCI President Cookson – Many Important Steps Forward

release by the UCI
Brian Cookson UCI President  ©  courtesy of UCI
December 21, 2014 (Aigle, Switzerland) – Since my election as Head of the UCI, many important steps forward have been made. This end of year update, which is the first of two to be published, focuses on the changes that have been introduced to restore trust and credibility in the UCI and cycling and how our fight against doping is getting ever more rigorous. I am convinced that they provide firm foundations to help us build an even more promising future for cycling. In each of the areas highlighted, our work continues at pace and will shape our priorities in the years ahead.

Restoring credibility – the fight against doping

In my election manifesto, I made it clear that one of my key priorities would be to restore trust in the UCI and transform the way anti-doping is managed.

Very quickly we established the Cycling Independent Reform Commission (CIRC) to investigate past problems of the sport and recommend changes to ensure they are not repeated. It is chaired by Dick Marty, a senior Swiss politician and former Attorney General with an excellent reputation. He is supported by his two Vice-Chairmen: Peter Nicholson, a former officer of the Australian Army specialised in criminal investigations, and Ulrich Haas, a German expert on anti-doping and also a highly respected arbitrator of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).

We have provided the Commission with a budget and have agreed the regulations under which the CIRC operate completely independently from the UCI.

The CIRC has the power to propose reductions of penalties imposed on license holders who assist the Commission and admit to a violation of the Anti-Doping Rules. The scale of reductions has been established in collaboration with the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).

The CIRCS’s work is nearing completion on time and on budget and I am looking forward to receiving its report in the first quarter of 2015 and implement its recommendations in the following months. This has been an enormous project and I don’t think any other sport has opened itself up to such independent scrutiny. While the CIRC’s findings may make uncomfortable reading, it is essential that we learn from the past, put in place appropriate changes and do all we can to ensure integrity at the UCI and in cycling.

We have taken other important steps to ensure our credibility and effectiveness in anti-doping. We opened ourselves up to independent audit by the Institute of National Anti-Doping Organisations (iNADO). A summary of the iNADO report is on the UCI website, and we are implementing its recommendations to ensure our processes are fully in line with best practice.

We have also implemented changes to ensure the independence of the Cycling Anti-Doping Foundation (CADF), the body responsible for defining and implementing the strategy for testing riders. The CADF reports to a board which is completely separate from the UCI and operates wholly independent of the UCI. Working relations between the UCI and the CADF are now rigorously governed by a strict set of rules to ensure, in particular, that the CADF does not receive any instructions from the UCI Management. The CADF Chairman Dr. George Ruijsch Van Dugteren is supported by three other members who are also independent of the UCI: two lawyers, Christophe Misteli and Thomas Capdevielle, and a financial expert, Yvan Haymoz.

A structural change that I made as soon as I took office was to create the Legal Anti-Doping Service, which is responsible for the legal aspects of a doping case once it has been established by the CADF’s testing, or via the biological passport. This work was previously performed by the UCI’s Legal Department. This new entity operates separately from the rest of the UCI – importantly, neither I, nor the UCI management have access to their files or information concerning ongoing cases.

The UCI also has a new external legal counsel (Antonio Rigozzi of Lévy Kaufmann-Kohler, based in Geneva) and is establishing an Anti-Doping Tribunal. This will hear first instance cases for international athletes instead of referring them to national federations. The Panel will be composed of judges who are experts in doping and are fully independent of the UCI. This revolution should offer athletes, regardless of their nationality, a more solid procedure, a clear timetable, shorter procedural times and more consistent decisions. The UCI administration is now working on the implementation of this Anti-Doping Tribunal, which should be operational early 2015.

All these advances have received a favourable response from WADA and its Chairman, Sir Craig Reedie and relations between the UCI and WADA are now very solid. Similarly, relations between the UCI and many National Anti-Doping Organisations (NADOs) – such as AFLD in France and USADA in the United States – have also improved significantly. The UCI has signed data sharing agreements with many of these organisations, and this should lead to further improvements in the effectiveness of the fight against doping.

The UCI now publishes the list of all penalties imposed on riders on its website, as soon as they are pronounced and notified to the main parties concerned. The UCI has gone even farther as it also publishes, even though not compulsory, the list of provisionally suspended riders. This is another important step towards greater transparency in the field of anti-doping.

So significant progress is being made in restoring trust in the way we are fighting doping and, make no mistake, this fight will go on as we head into 2015 and beyond.

Greater openness, transparency and dialogue

Important changes have also taken place to ensure the UCI operates in a more open and transparent way. Soon after my election, my salary was made public and I signed a register of potential conflicts of interest. All members of the UCI Management Committee have done the same. We have also set up a Remuneration Commission based on the model of those existing in other Federations and the corporate world. This commission, acting in accordance with current best practices, is responsible in particular for setting the salary of the President and the members of the Management Committee.

The membership of the Ethics Commission has been completely revised to ensure greater independence from the UCI. From now on, the UCI Congress will be required to ratify the appointment of its new members, whose high moral stature must be unanimously recognised. The Commission is chaired by New Zealander Richard Leggat and its coordinator is independent of the UCI.

We have also made important changes to ensure that the voice of the athletes is heard in everything we do. The mission statement of the Athletes’ Commission has been completely revised in order to give athletes a real voice within the UCI. It will have 12 members (two for each of the Olympic disciplines – road, track, mountain bike and BMX – and one for the other disciplines – para-cycling, cyclo-cross, trials and indoor cycling). The Commission Chairperson, elected from among its members, will also be co-opted as a member of the UCI Management Committee. In addition, there is now a representative of the riders on all UCI Commissions related to cycling disciplines.

Over the last 14 months I believe I have encouraged real dialogue, and have worked hard to find solutions with those members of the cycling family (event organisers, teams, riders, bicycle manufacturers and the media) with whom, previously, the UCI sometimes had a conflicting relationship, leading to stalemates and severe damage to its image.

So a huge amount of work has taken place on these critical fronts and this work will go on as we continue to rebuild trust and integrity in everything we do.

I would like to thank the hard work and support of all my colleagues in the UCI and from across the cycling family who have helped to deliver this progress. It is clear to me that we have been a much more unified sport over the past year, no longer distracted and divided by conflict. Such unity is critical to the health and growth of our great sport.

I will publish the second part of my end of year update next Monday which will focus on the progress being made to grow cycling worldwide, the latest on the restructure of men’s elite road cycling, how we are supporting women’s cycling, and embracing innovation.





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