Copying the bit from the Madiot book "Parlons vélo" that I translated & posted on the Pharmacy about the elections. Interview with Mathieu Coureau of Ouest-France.
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Coureau: If Cookson gets reelected?
Half the French calendar will disappear in the three years to come. For example: late July, the London Surrey Classic is held at the same time as San Sebastian and the Tour of Poland. The bigger teams will go to London. We, in France, have the Polynormande. How do we do? That's it. We are all gonna die. So will the teams because there is no room for anybody.
Coureau: There are no remedies? Have you written to Brian Cookson? Have you initiated proceedings?
We have never had any responses to our requests for an interview about this World Tour calendar reform. We wanted to expose our difficulties. We wanted them to revise their plans. Sponsors like Cofidis, AG2R or La Française des Jeux have injected money into cycling for 20 years or more. I consider they are major actors. They have never been asked their opinion, they have never even been listened to. Nothing. Not even a dialogue. The French problems regard France.
So we attacked them at a legal level, yes, at the League. We wanted meeting minutes. Then actually you noticed that there was no trace. They are deciding with a few of them, according to their own interests. Whether we are losing or winning before the CAS is after all not really a problem. What I want is to get till the end in order for them to understand that it is not because they are the UCI that they may do whatever they want. At least daring to lead an action against them while nobody believed in it, settles things. I am sorry but I have lived more things in cycling than Cookson has. I have brought a budget to a cycling team for 20 years. What has he brought? He has disappointed me. He is rather friendly and I have nothing against the man but what he is undertaking makes no sense.
I have sixty people to feed at the end of every month. Cookson is not the one to come and tell them "I am sorry but I have no more job for you". I am the one. Some of the guys have a wife, kids and need to work in order to eat. So I am fighting. I might be virulent and aggressive but I am going to keep on. I will not give him any presents. A matter of principles. We are here, we exist and you are going to cope with us even if we are small. I am not completely work, it is not possible.
Coureau: It seems that you are at the same wrath level as after Manolo Saiz' "sh*t Frenchies" in 1998?
Something of the sort, only now I notice that on the international scene, they seem to look at me in a different way. My foreign colleagues are saying "He has got a big mouth but he acts. He dares to. Not us."
Coureau: Some French credibility has been established with the help of your results?
Yes you may say what you want about French cycling but it is standing. Exactly.
Coureau: Cookson is cristallising your disappointment but more globally, you are targeting the Anglo-Saxon model, aren't you?
Yes he and all the guys around him. They are still ruling on the team reform which the "Université des Science et du sport" of Lausanne wanted. That stuff has been prepared for three years and they are still discussing issues such as "Can a doctor also be a trainer?" I raised my voice in meetings with them and said: "Wait a minute, do you want to turn back the clock with doctors such as Ferrari or Conconi? I was there in 1998. All over again?" They are wide off the mark. [...]
Coureau: You only believe in David Lappartient?
I feel like believing in him, yes. First because he is Latin and thereby has a solid culture of this sport, knowledge of its base. He knows what a village race is ["course de village", just another phrase in French as equivalent to the Belgian kermess, like "course de clocher" ("Churchtower Races")], he knows how race organisations work. He is a politician but I think he feels like defending this cycling DNA and if he gets elected in Bergen in September 2017, he will not have any other choice than trying to do something and move the lines. Otherwise I fail to see how we are going to overcome.
Coureau: Has worry gained grounds?
Yes and then 80% of race organisations are the works of associations and voluntary workers. If you do not bear that in mind, you are massively wrong. You are dead. David Lappartient knows about that. The voluntary workers are also ageing.
Coureau: You may be a young President of the Boucles de la Mayenne like Pierrick Guesné and be fed up sometimes ...
Yes it is also an all-French affair. Whatever the sporting event you organise you have an administrative overload. You really need to be motivated to organise, feel like having responsabilities... If there is a crash on your race you have the handcuffs in detention. It is troublesome. Also in this respect people's lives can be made easier.
Coureau: the gap has increased between those voluntary workers like Guy and Jocelyne Leriget in the Mayenne, real mainstay of the same Boucles de la Mayenne and the authorities?
The UCI's disdain is complete. These are rednecks who were unable to evolve, that is what they are going to tell you up there if ever you are telling them about those admirable voluntary workers. It is a bit like in the world of labour, this cult of companies against the craftsmen's world. I am sorry but we need craftsmen. The little ones have a right to live. The problem is that there will always be people like Patrick Lefevere to tell you in a meeting:
Marc, in cycling just like in life, the big ones are made to eat the small ones
Cookson is on the same track. He's planting flags on sand and I am not talking about geography, in places where people have money and who are pleased to see a bike race at a given moment. It cannot persist in time. It is a bad start. The day they have no more races, half as many teams and riders, what will they do? They will invent a new policy in order to restart the machine? Probably. The old farmer in me is still present: the land of the farm is handed over from father to son and I hope I can raise my son enough in order for him not to get rid of it. For what it's worth cycling is like a land that you hand over. I reached the final part of my career and I need to hand something over. If I am not fighting for it I am neither honest towards myself nor towards the people who had worked before me. People like Colonel Richard Marillier or Cyrille Guimard [Marillier was the French national coach from 1969 to 1981, a former resistant during WWII, he was a major influence to Madiot before the latter turned pro. He passed away in January this year] and many more. Towards all those who have built up this story with its positive and negative aspects, the wounds, the plagues, all. I am not alone. I am sure that Jean-René Bernaudeau is on the same track even if we have never talked about it, so is Vincent Lavenu, David Lappartient, Christian Prudhomme... We have a common DNA.
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