McQuaid re-elected as UCI president

Pat McQuaid won an uncontested re-election as president of the International Cycling Union (UCI) in Lugano, Switzerland, on Friday. He will continue to serve for an addition four-year term.

The Irishman emphasised his focus on the "endless fight" against doping. "It is an endless fight for the UCI, and one which I am determined that the UCI will continue," McQuaid told the AP news agency.

"There is no place for cheats in our sport. We have had a good Tour de France, and at this stage I am not aware, for the first time in many years, that there are any positive controls," he added.

Riders who cheat now have a better chance of getting caught, McQuaid explained, because of the biological passport programme. "We are no longer looking for a needle in a haystack," he said. "We do targeted testing. We test riders morning, noon and night. We chase after riders who we see have suspicious values. We test for more substances."

Some 13,800 samples from 850 riders were taken this year, the UCI president noted. About 7,500 of them were unannounced out-of-competition controls; this is a dramatic increase from the figure of about 200 taken annually just three years ago.

Looking back at his first term, McQuaid said that it was good that he was able to settle conflicts with the organisers of the three Grand Tours. "The most important thing is that they recognise the UCI is the government of the sport of cycling worldwide, and its authority as such is indisputable."

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