Not Pat McQuaid · @UCI_Overlord
13th Feb 2013 from Twitlonger
Latest press release from Ashenden issued a few hours ago
The President of the International Cycling Union Pat McQuaid has been deceitful and deliberately misled the public and media about Lance Armstrong’s suspicious blood values during his comeback in 2009 and 2010.
During the last 24 hours the UCI have been forced to admit that they never sent Armstrong’s suspicious blood values to their expert panel for scrutiny. This admission flatly contradicts an interview Pat McQuaid gave to the website Velonews five days ago, in which he gave assurances that all of Armstrong’s blood values had been reviewed by the experts and found to be normal.
Today the UCI sought to dodge accountability by putting forward the limp excuse that Armstrong’s profile had not been shared with the experts because it was not flagged by the passport software. The UCI also sought to shift responsibility by claiming that the decision on which passports to share with experts were made by the Lausanne laboratory, not the UCI. However, Pat McQuaid has previously stated that the UCI do themselves also examine the raw data from passports (for example in Pat McQuaid’s Open Letter to cyclists on 17 May 2011). The UCI have also repeatedly claimed to target test their riders based on information gleaned directly from their blood profiles. Therefore, because the UCI inspects the raw data themselves, and because they use that information to conduct targeted testing, it is simply untenable to believe that the UCI did not examine the passport profile of the podium finishers from the 2009 Tour de France.
If the UCI failed to examine Armstrong’s raw data when he placed third at the 2009 Tour de France, the UCI were derelict in their obligations to faithfully run the passport on behalf of the riders, teams and race organisers who contribute 85% of the costs of running the passport program. Those stakeholders deserve to know that their program is being run by competent and diligent managers.
If on the other hand the UCI did examine Armstrong’s raw data but failed to recognise that flat line blood values in tandem with suppressed bone marrow activity in the third place getter of a major Tour was consistent with the possible use of blood transfusion, they have proven themselves to be biologically illiterate. This immediately puts into question the veracity of the UCI’s repeated statements that their interpretation of the peleton’s blood values indicates a decrease in the extent of doping since 2008. There could be fifty cyclists doping