June 22, 2007 (Aigle, Switzerland) – The CPA (Cycliste Professionnels Associés Internationale) deplores the fact that the UCI did not expose the details of the “riders’ commitment for a new cycling” during the meeting that took place on June 15 in Aigle.

It also regrets it was not informed about the choice of the riders who signed the document in the presence of the press. It considers that the UCI should have informed it, more in detail, about the step which it was going to take.

Moreover, that commitment which the riders were requested to sign without reserve, has been interpreted in different ways by the bunch.

On the one hand, many riders received this initiative very positively on account of the fact that they want to show, and for a long time, that their behaviour is irreproachable and that they have nothing to hide as for their sport results. Above all, they want to fight on equal terms and in all honesty throughout the season and in all the competitions.

Other riders feel that measure like being one constraint more and are frustrated because it was taken without prior dialogue with their representatives.

However these same riders acknowledge the fact that, given the current circumstances, it would not be credible to refuse to submit to that obligation.

The CPA is conscious that it is time to stop beating about the bush and that it is necessary for the collective to definitively become aware of the fact that the profession is in danger and of the existing peril that, shortly, more and more sponsors could disappear. As a consequence the contracts would be likely not to meet any longer the financial conditions compared with the hard job of professional cyclist.

It is obvious that this measure shows, once more, that a majority of clean riders continue to pay the consequences of some cheaters’ irresponsible behaviours who must be excluded from the bunch. These cheaters have not understood yet that they are encircled by the zero allowance and that, sooner or later, they will irremediably be unmasked.

In other respects, the CPA is glad about the fact that, finally, the fight to finish cleaning our sport is not longer centred exclusively on the riders. The CPA requires that the UCI complete, as soon as possible, and as it declared on June 19 in Geneva, the implementation of an ethical code for the totality of the people belonging, closely or distantly, to the staff of professional teams.

The CPA reminds that it expressed this wish on several occasion these last years to the UCI so that the riders are no longer the only ones to be punished.

On principle of equality, it considers that the implementation of an ethical code applied to the organizers is also necessary.

Finally, the CPA and all the professional riders wish that the differences showed for too long in our circle, definitively make way for a long-lasting atmosphere of intelligence and comprehension shared by all the stakeholders.