I do like the idea of searching out beyond cycling's inner circle for leadership. And I definitely like the idea of finding anti-dopers to head the UCI, but the picks could have been much worse. I think because both guys are viewed as being friendly, and both speak a few languages, their names rose to the top. Besides, looking for an ex-racer between the age of about 35 and 50 who never doped, I believe Christophe Bassons and Giles Delion are working elsewhere.
People are missing the silver lining in all this. Here's a cut and paste:
UPTC that are appointed by the UCI, four memberships have been modified. Felice Gimondi, Miguel Indurain, Rudolf Scharping and Hein Verbruggen will no longer assist the council's president
This right there is a huge step in the right direction, even though he's not completely gone. Continuing on, there's more interesting news...
...but will be replaced by: Roger Legeay, Ramón Mendiburu, Stephen Roche and Erik Zabel.
Legay was the former DS of Peugeot, Z, Gan, then CA. When he raced, back in 1974 he was positive for amphetamines. But his teams ran a fairly tight ship in recent years, so it's hard to say what we're going to get from him.
Two members represent the riders (Dario Cioni, Céric Vasseur)...
Both ended up in at least one doping scandal in their career, though for the most part cleared.
...two represent race organisers (Michael Hinz, Charly Mottet)...
Now that's good news. Mottet, according to Willy Voet, was pretty much clean and anti-doping his entire career, even during the EPO era, and by all accounts a sharp guy.
two represent the teams (Roberto Amadio, Jonathan Vaughters)
We all know who JV is, he's actually posted on here before. Amadio is the head of Liquigas. I would have preferred Eric Boyer.
All in all, I'd say it is a small step in the right direction, and a bigger step to get Hein further from cycling. In all we should perhaps be lucky, we could have Hein taking on a bigger role, the riders represented by any number of riders who do everything to uphold and enforce the omerta, and the teams represented by Patrick Lefevere and Johan Brunyeel!