McQuaid reacts to rejection of ProTour

By Shane Stokes

UCI President Pat McQuaid has chosen to play down today's announcement by Patrice Clerc that the organisers of cycling's three major Tours would never join the ProTour. Clerc spoke to reporters prior to Saturday's time trial at the Tour de France, saying that there would be no further discussions with the UCI on the matter.

"My primary reaction would be that I do not wish to get into a war of words over the airwaves with Patrice Clerc," McQuaid told Cyclingnews on Saturday evening. "I think that he has enough on his plate at the moment, given that people like Dick Pound have come out recently and said that his event is in the toilet. I feel that Patrice Clerc should be dealing with that issue rather than worrying about the ProTour and the discussions on it."

The Irishman was keen to clear up talk about a lack of recent communication on the subject. "I've heard suggestions that the last time I had discussions on the ProTour was when I was down to see the Spanish authorities back in May. That is completely incorrect," he asserts. "We actually spoke the Monday before the Tour, myself and Patrice Clerc sitting down for three hours in a meeting in Brussels. That was prior to another meeting I had that afternoon with Christian Prudhomme and Patrick Lefevere, about what we would do if and when the list of names [relating to Operación Puerto] came to us. So it's totally wrong to say that there hasn't been talks of late."

"I think he can be grateful to the UCI ProTour as it was because of the ProTour and the Code of Ethics that the decision was able to taken last Friday to exclude the riders implicated in the doping affair," he continued. "Under UCI rules and also under the rules of every other Federation out there, we cannot sanction a rider unless he has been proven guilty. Neither can the Tour de France. At the end of the day, the UCI ProTour teams' Code of Ethics meant that the teams were the only ones who were in a position to do it. They met their responsibility and did just that. Therefore I think he can be thankful to the UCI ProTour that that happened."