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UCI Scorecard: Are the CIRC Recommendations Being Implemented?

Brian Cookson took over the UCI Presidency in late 2013, heralding a new direction in pro cycling, and proposing sweeping changes in the way that the sport was managed and overseen. It was widely hoped that his election would signal the beginning of a new and cleaner era in pro cycling.  One of the key initiatives in Cookson’s early agenda was to create the Cycling Independent Reform Commission (CIRC) – a panel of independent experts to look at the history of cycling, and to make recommendations for cleaning up and better managing the sport in the future.  The Commission was funded to the tune of €3 million, was led by three independent experts and was supported by a small internal staff.  It spent a year assessing the current situation in pro cycling.  It interviewed some 174 individuals, including past and present riders, team managers, doctors, scientists, owners, sponsors, event...

The CIRC Report: A Missed Opportunity

There has already been considerable comment and reflection on the much anticipated CIRC report – and reactions have predictably varied across the spectrum.  But there seems to be general agreement that the published report has finally validated a relevant and cohesive historical narrative about doping and the role of the UCI – even if many of the facts and figures were already fairly well known around the cycling community.  Unfortunately, the formal recommendations offered by the report, which were intended to be the main focus of the overall project, fall far short of expectations. It is important first to look back at what the CIRC was originally chartered to do, and how the final report addresses those specific tasks and objectives. In terms of the first of its three major objectives – which were discussed on page 16 of the report, and as generally laid out in the original “Terms...

Nineteen Eighty-Three

Brian Cookson, president of the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI), has stated that its newly-minted Cycling Independent Reform Commission (CIRC) will look approximately fifteen years back in time, as it attempts to understand and address cycling’s modern doping dilemma.  This time frame neatly coincides with the low points of the Lance Armstrong era, but the root causes go much deeper than one man.  Fifteen years may help the UCI to pinpoint and investigate the sinister activities and possible collusion that occurred in cycling’s darkest days, but the CIRC must review about thirty years of history to truly understand and fix the corruption that has poisoned the sport, and to bring about lasting reform. The strange, totalitarian world envisioned by George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four  might seem like pure fiction, but cycling embarked upon its own “Cold War” and dystopian journey in...

Fair Treatment Through Comparative Justice

Lance Armstrong and others continue to push for a version of “truth and reconciliation,” in which major contributors to corruption in professional cycling might receive amnesty in exchange for a full confession. While such admissions and information might broaden our understanding of the doping era, automatic amnesties will only benefit a few selfish individuals at the expense of many others. However, if a real truth and reconciliation commission (TRC) is held, they might get the fairness that they’re asking for, though perhaps not exactly as they envision. We hope that the Union Cycliste International (UCI) is able to springboard from its planned independent commission on into a TRC – so that the discoveries of the independent commission cannot be co-opted by a few individuals, or be used to deliver an incomplete story of cycling’s sordid recent past. Let’s assume that the logistical...

Independent Commission vs. Truth and Reconciliation Commission

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