McQuaid relieved as CIRC report clears him of corruption
By Julien Pretot
PARIS (Reuters) - Former International Cycling Union (UCI) president Pat McQuaid is relieved that he has been cleared of outright corruption by an Independent Reform Commission (CIRC) report on Monday.
The CIRC report said that McQuaid, UCI president from 2006-13, and his predecessor Hein Verbruggen, showed leniency in the fight against doping but found no evidence of corruption.
"I made myself available to the Commission on three occasions," McQuaid told Reuters by telephone.
"And when you consider that the Commission had access to all of my emails -- received, sent, personal, internal, business over a 10-year period and that they forensically examined these emails and found nothing untoward it says a lot.
"And I'm happy that it reports that there was no corruption and no complicity in relation to doping and that, for me, is very important."
The report, however, showed that McQuaid bent the rules to allow Armstrong to make his comeback to the sport at the 2009 Tour Down Under even if he was not, as the regulations state, in the registered pool of (anti-doping) testing during the six months preceding the race.
"Pat McQuaid made a sudden U-turn and allowed Lance Armstrong to return 13 days early to participate in the Tour Down Under, despite advice from UCI staff not to make an exception," the report said.
"And there was a temporal link between this decision, which was communicated to UCI staff in the morning, and the decision of Lance Armstrong, which was notified to Pat McQuaid later that same day, to participate in the Tour of Ireland, an event run by people known to Pat McQuaid."
McQuaid, however, preferred to look at the bigger picture.
"If I had not put a lot of my time and energy into the fight against doping as the report recognises and led to significant progress maybe I would have had more time to spend more time on governance and management which the report finds criticism with," he said.
"The area which is under investigation is only one part of an enormously challenging role as UCI president and I am proud of my achievements in developing the sport globally."
(Editing by Ed Osmond)
