The offices of Pat McQuaid at the UCI headquarters
For weeks now, ever since USADA's report broke with their recommendation that Lance Armstrong be stripped of his seven Tour de France titles, I have been living in hope that perhaps the UCI will see fit to grant them to myself. I had two reasons to believe this might be possible and so you can see why perhaps I was a little saddened yesterday to learn that they were giving them to nobody. I had to assume too many people -- like numerous kids screaming for not enough chocolate -- led the UCI to say, "right, if that's how you're going to behave, nobody's getting them".
The first reason I thought I stood a chance was because I was a bike racer who has never doped. In the grand pyramid of the cycling system, with Mount Everest being the top where Lance once stood (he's currently swimming the with fishes), and the bottom being the depth of the deepest Ocean, I'm probably hovering in and around the Titanic. But there had to be this chance that they were all a bunch of dopers right the way through the system as far as me and that's why I was as low down the ladder as I was and thus the best option to reward those Tours to. Heck, for a while I even pronounced myself "7 time winner of the Tour de France ... by default," on my Twitter page.
The other reason I had for being hopeful was that they might run a raffle draw for them. You know, drag Bradley Wiggins onto the podium in Paris next year and this time take him seriously when he says, "now time for the raffle," before ramming his hand into a 'hat' -- a huge hat given the likelihood of interest -- and drawing out seven names to come forth and stand on the podiums backdated between 1999 and 2005.
Neither of these appear now to be likely and I'll have to make do with the knowledge that I have now won as many Tours de France as Lance Armstrong. Heck, I won as many Tour de France titles as anyone did over a seven year stretch through the last year of the twentieth century and the first six years of the twenty first.
So what now for me? Well, I suppose I'll slump around home for another few days yet looking at the poor weather outside that gives me a good excuse to be lazy, before November 1 when I have sworn I will kick myself down to the gym and kick my winter training into gear so that when the next cycling season comes around I can enjoy my racing and enjoy doing it clean. I guess it's the next best thing to winning the Tour de France and certainly better than losing those titles for cheating.
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In other news filtering out of the corridors of power that is the UCI headquarters (see above picture), the UCI management committee has announced that an external independent commission be established to examine "various allegations made about the UCI relating to the Armstrong affair," most likely headed up by two blokes by the name of Pat McQuaid and Hein Verbruggen. Complete coincidence that they share the same name of cycling's evil version of Batman and Robin, of course.
The commission will look into allegations that Armstrong may have bribed the UCI to make a positive test from the 2001 Tour of Switzerland, go away. Real cloak and dagger stuff here folks. Chances are the result of the investigation will be that nothing untoward took place but that some drug testing equipment was purchased for them and that this won't be allowed to happen again. They'll agree that yes, something maybe could have been done to perhaps foresee this whole Armstrong saga of the past few months and that there wasn't enough all round vigilance, but this wasn't the fault of any one person. In summary we'll hear that there was no clear sign of corruption, and that the intentions of messrs McQuaid and Verbruggen were entirely honourable and so both shall not only keep their jobs, but earn a hefty pay raise. All UCI members fees ... up ten percent.
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But that's not all. Yes it was a busy day for the UCI. As part of this investigation they have decided to suspend their pathetic, waste of time and (my member fees) money, legal pursuit of journalist Paul Kimmage. For those who haven't followed this little sideshow, Kimmage had dared to speak his mind and give his opinion, which in the minds of the UCI regime, was absolutely unacceptable. 'How dare you speak ill of the great leaders,' and all that, and, in the classic 'we're rich and you're not so we'll scare a retraction out of you by threatening you with letters from our team of lawyers' mode, they pursued Kimmage.
Now, with the knowledge that Kimmage isn't going away and that in fact his public support is so great that he has raised quite the sizeable defence fund via public donations, the UCI have used this timely investigation into themselves as a good excuse to suspend the hunt of Kimmage, in the hope that it'll just fade away now.
Kimmage however, with a little financial might now on his side, appears to have no intentions of going quietly into the night. Tweeting late yesterday he went all Maximus Decimus Meridius in Gladiator on us. "How do I feel? I feel like Maximus as he prepared for battle ... On my signal, unleash hell. ... Hope to deliver that signal very soon."
