McQuaid urged to seek CAS ruling

The president of the International Cycling Union (UCI) Pat McQuaid has been challenged to prove his commitment to good governance by taking a dispute over the forthcoming election to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

USA Cycling, with the backing of several other national federations -Russia, Canada, Finland and Algeria — had written to McQuaid, the Irishman who heads the organisation, asking for the CAS to rule on the case and avoid any future legal battles.

McQuaid is being challenged by British Cycling's chairman Brian Cookson and the dispute centres on whether McQuaid should be allowed to stand for re-election despite not being nominated by his home federation Ireland nor Switzerland where he lives.

The Irishman has instead been nominated by Thailand and Morocco and will ask the UCI Congress in Florence on September 27th to ratify a rule change allowing this.

The letter from USA Cycling's president and chief executive Steve Johnson states: "The cycling world has been watching the UCI Presidential race carefully and its reaction has varied from amusement to outrage, from bewilderment to astonishment

“We believe strongly enough about the legal principles involved to ask a court to resolve this constitutional dispute in due course.

“We also care enough about our international federation to try everything in our power to avoid a protracted battle that might cast the results of the election into doubt for many months to come.”

The letter points out that the US Olympic Committee agreed to let CAS rule on the body banning drugs cheats from the next Games — the USOC’s law was overturned by the court.

In an interview, Johnson told Press Association Sport this was not an attack on McQuaid but an attempt to clarify the UCI’s rules. He said: “This is not about one candidate or the other, this is about an open and fair and legitimate election.”

Johnson said nomination by a candidate’s home association had “traditionally” been the rule but “based on the fact we are dealing with a brand new interpretation that seems to have been designed to suit a certain candidate it needs clarification.

“It has been a challenging year I think a fresh approach is needed, and first and foremost is transparency and good governance.

“There are big ambiguous components to the UCI constitution the first step in moving down that road is to make sure all our actions are open and transparent.”

The five federations’ letters, addressed to McQuaid and UCI director general Christophe Hubschmid, call on McQuaid to “demonstrate his allegiance to the UCI constitution” by agreeing “to forego the spectre of any post-election litigation over Article 51.1 for the certainty of a pre-election, binding decision by the Court of Arbitration for Sport.”