Five thoughts on the ongoing UCI reform

By Bertrand Fincoeur, University of Leuven, Leuven Institute of Criminology

It is now a well-known fact that a culture of tolerance towards doping was widespread within elite cycling until at least the end of the 1990s (e.g. Brissonneau, Ohl & Aubel, 2008; Christiansen, 2005; Hoberman, 2002). A systematic doping system was then promoted by most, if not all, elite cycling teams so that riders had no real alternative to taking illegal enhancers if they wanted to be competitive. However, one cannot say that nothing has changed. Indeed, due to increasing pressure from the global anti-doping movement that took shape in the early 2000s, there has been some evidence of a gradual erosion of this large-scale doping acceptance (e.g. Dimeo, 2014; Waddington & Smith, 2009). As a result, the insiders of yesterday’s cycling culture (i.e. the dopers) more and more appear as the outsiders of today’s culture. Additionally, the fear of the economic consequences from doping scandals constrained several elite cycling actors to consider the necessity to “clean up” elite cycling in order to secure its own survival (e.g. Fincoeur & Paoli, 2014; Waddington & Smith, 2009). The International Cycling Union (UCI) now also seems to take seriously its role in order “to restore the credibility of the sport, an essential element to ensure the economic and commercial stability and growth that is targeted” (UCI, 2014). It is in this context that the UCI has commissioned the Institute of Sports Sciences of the University of Lausanne (ISSUL) for assistance in the development and the implementation of the reform of men’s elite road cycling. An important work area of the reform process was the design of a new standard of operational guidelines for elite teams to ensure that “all riders are properly supported and supervised”. As I am currently associate researcher at ISSUL, I have been asked to share some thoughts on that process. I will summarize this in five points.

1/ The basic idea of the operational guide starts from the assumption that a better supervision of riders by highly-educated staff members is needed. These should pay greater attention to the riders’ work conditions, and thereby help preventing situations of vulnerability, which could otherwise result in individual doping practices. As a consequence, preventing doping should primarily focus on the way cycling teams are organized. The operational guide, which should become compulsory for 2017[1], includes ten rules related to rider support. These rules are intended to be “best practices” that every team has to comply with. They cover the following areas: the preparation of riders (planning of training, competition and recovery phases); rider support (sufficient number of staff within the team, with respect to the number of riders); medical supervision of riders; the workload imposed on them; the number of riders within the team (to allow the recommended rider-support staff ratio to be respected within sustainable financial limits); the monitoring of riders (via an online platform), etc. It is thus noteworthy that former corporate criminal entities[2] (i.e. elite cycling teams, at a time when they openly supported a doping organization) are now requested to be actively involved in anti-doping and that accompanying the riders within the teams, all year long, is considered a key factor in reducing the risk of doping. Indeed, looking back at the recent history of cycling, entrusting the teams as anti-doping actors may at first glance look like letting the fox guard the henhouse. The Festina cycling team was a model of efficiency in which everything was made to take care of all aspects of the riders’ life, including supplying doping substances and methods. Considering today that the doping risks may be contained if the riders are strongly supervised by their teams therefore constitutes evidence of a major change in the expected and possible role attributed to elite cycling teams.

2/ Indubitably, the history of anti-doping shows that authorities have mostly focused on individual dopers. Athletes have been increasingly tested since the 1960s, not least today through invasive privacy measures, and dopers may with the implementation of the 2015 WADC even face a lifetime suspension under certain conditions. In this context, the pressure put by the UCI on the teams as organizations responsible for reducing the doping risks may seem fair. As an example, after five doping cases in late 2014 and the subsequent audit realized by ISSUL, Team Astana (i.e. one of the most successful elite cycling teams comprising  the 2014 Tour de France winner, Vincenzo Nibali) now risks a withdrawal of its World Tour license as UCI considers “that the ISSUL audit has, among other things, revealed a big difference between the (anti-doping) policies and structures that the team presented to the License Commission in December and the reality on the ground” (UCI, 2015). More broadly, making teams aware of their responsibilities may help switching from this individualizing simplistic conception of the athlete as the main, if not the singular, person at fault when a doping violation occurs.

3/ The reform unintentionally brings several risks of a possible increased use of illegal enhancers. For instance, a change like the downsizing of the amount of riders per team should increase the pressure on “borderline” riders (i.e. those whose future as contracted rider is very precarious). Indeed, these riders are de facto put in a more unstable position where they could be tempted to break the rules in order to survive professionally. Moreover, as UCI aims to reduce the authorized amount of race days, the elite riders will be concentrated in fewer races. As a consequence, there will be less mixing of young or nearly-pro with elite riders that historically occurred at lower-level races, which previously gave the chance to the former to discover the latter’s world. This change should in the short-term disconnect top elite cycling with some of its popular roots, as the local races will feature fewer stars of the sport, but in the long run also widen the gap between elite and non-elite riders, thereby increasing the difficulty to become an elite rider, and therefore increasing a possible doping temptation for the younger generation.

4/ Alas, I already think that the reform is a missed opportunity to invite an eminent international sports federation to further the debate about the introduction of a harm reduction policy in the sports field. It is clear from the reform and the operational guidelines that the aim of the reform is to strengthen the support and the supervision of all riders. This includes a higher professionalization of the staff and therefore a greater attention devoted in the teams to e.g. training programs or nutrition advices. Of course, it mirrors the influence of Team Sky’s management model with its high-performance scientific approach to cycling. But the objective of an officially ethics- and health-inspired drug-free elite sport – i.e. what the anti-doping crusade actually tends to impose – poorly conceals how arbitrary these notions are. Being someone who has followed a mountain stage in a professional cycling team car, I often first recommend – and not without irony – to consider the imposition of a speed limit for descending the slopes during races[3] before we even start thinking of preventing riders from recovering from hard training and races by e.g. the use of the now illegal IVs.

5/ Finally, from a scientific point of view, the ongoing work made at ISSUL, especially the considerable amount of both qualitative and quantitative data[4]

collected in the course of the meetings with cycling authorities and all elite cycling teams (in 2015: 37 World Tour and Pro Continental teams) should lead to (hopefully) fruitful research. Actually, it seems that it is a unique opportunity to have such access to primary and systematic data collection in elite cycling in its entirety. Let’s hope we will soon be able to share the first of future results at the upcoming INHDR conference!

References

Brissonneau, C., Aubel, O., & Ohl, F. (2008). L’épreuve du dopage. Sociologie du cyclisme professionnel. Paris: PUF.

Christiansen, A.V. (2005). The Legacy of Festina: Patterns of Drug Use in European Cycling Since 1998. Sports in History, 25 (3), 497-514.

Dimeo, P. (2014). Why Lance Armstrong? Historical Context and Key Turning Points in the ‘Cleaning Up’ of Professional Cycling. The International Journal of the History of Sport, Published Online first.

Fincoeur, B., & Paoli, L. (2014). Des pratiques communautaires au marché du dopage. Evolution de la distribution des produits dopants dans le cyclisme. Déviance et Société, 38 (1), 3-27.

Hoberman, J. (2002). A Pharmacy on Wheels: Doping and Community Cohesion among Professional Cyclists Following the Tour de France Scandal of 1998. In V. Møller, & J. Nauright (Eds.), The Essence of Sport (pp. 107-127). Odense: University Press of Southern Denmark.

Paoli, L., & Donati, A. (2014). The Sports Doping Market. New York: Springer.

UCI (2014). UCI WorldTour seminar welcomes the return of credibility to the sport, and marks the beginning of the implementation of the reform of men’s elite road cycling. Retrieved from www.uci.ch/pressreleases/uci-worldtour-seminar-welcomes-the-return-credibility-the-sport-and-marks-the-beginning-the-implementation-the-reform-men-elite-road-cycling/

UCI (2015). The UCI requests withdrawal of Astana Pro Team licence. Retrieved from www.uci.ch/pressreleases/the-uci-requests-withdrawal-astana-pro-team-licence/

Waddington, I., & Smith, A. (2009). An Introduction to Drugs in Sport: Addicted to Winning? London: Routledge.

[1] In order to obtain a UCI World Tour license, and to retain it, the UCI World Teams must meet criteria covering sporting, ethical, financial and administrative matters. Within the framework of the reform of elite road cycling, they must satisfy one extra criterion, known as “organizational”, from 2017.

[2] As criminal law provisions on doping do not exist in all countries, it may be difficult to speak about corporate crime (i.e. the offences committed for the corporation and those of the corporation itself), unless the concept is interpreted broadly to include violations to e.g. sports rules. As doping use was previously widely accepted, it could either be difficult to consider it as a deviance. Nevertheless, one can at least state that the organized doping system then implemented by cycling teams has been an example of corporate misconduct. See Paoli & Donati (2014).

[3] Indeed, there have been more fatalities and serious injuries on descents – even deaths as the cases of elite riders Casartelli, Kivilev and Weylandt – than have been associated with doping.

[4] These data concern e.g. internal (anti-doping) policies, attitudes towards (anti-)doping, models of team management, training techniques, etc.