The Verdict
An expensive exercise in telling us what we knew? Yes. Pat McQuaid started an inquest and shut it down only for Brian Cookson to make it a solemn election pledge with beaucoup budget.
There's something CIRC-ular as old stories are repeated. If we knew the past was rotten now it's UCI-approved rather than the stuff of op-eds and online forums. It's one thing to read the UCI should have stopped Lance Armstrong in 1999 in a newspaper or on a blog, it's another when it's signed off in a formal report.
There's little that's juicy. Don't imagine a sizzling steak, the CIRC's meaty report is somewhere between well-done and carbonized. Rather than serving saucy info a lot of the report reheats old dishes and is peppered with footnotes from cyclingnews.com and other news sources as it builds the story of the UCI and anti-doping over the past 20 years, as if the commission spent weeks on the web to collate a pricey prcis of the past. Despite the CIRC lamenting loose financial controls we don't know what the CIRC's cost, reports say $3 million.
There are revelations here and there but the bulk is confirmation: the UCI wasn't bribed to cover-up positive tests but it ignored suspicious tests; on Lance Armstrong the governing body was too carried away with the marketing but the Texan wasn?t alone, other star riders got special treatment. If UCI's management wasn't financially corrupt it was managerially suspect with few checks and balances to stop abuses of power. As for today, the belief is doping continues whether it's gaming the bio passport, abusing TUEs and so on and change in recent years has largely come from teams, managers and riders pulling back from wild ways because it had become bad for business.
The recommendations are necessary but not sufficient. Public acknowledgement that some riders are gaming the bio passport is saying that some major riders are doping and will reignite suspicions. Meanwhile the CIRC has shone a spotlight on the peloton's hypochondria as some guzzle pills like force-fed geese but it's wrong, as is the abuse of TUEs. The UCI should adopt the MPCC's rest rule for those using cortisone, the one that stopped Chris Horner riding the 2014 Vuelta.
Closer to home, will Brian Cookson tackle Igor Makarov? The Russian sidestepped the CIRC and if he can't co-operate fully with the UCI's own report, will the rest of the management committee have faith in him?
Finally some will moan the report isn't racey enough but remember it was meant to look at the past, to investigate the causes of doping with a view to making recommendations for the future rather than tail and trail today's riders. Is there another sport that would have commissioned this, can you imagine tennis, athletics or soccer asking for a CIRC? Cycling was the first to see its stars perp-walked by police and rousted by reasoned decisions, now it's asking why it happened. Still the recommendations seem modest and vague, hardly a roaring chorus of reform. The past 20 years of cycling have been chaotic with a confused governing central but not causal to this. Now it's up to the UCI to shape the future of the sport. Time will tell if it's up to the job.
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