A corrupt UCI?!

jim one

Anyone else seen this??

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-p ... 525072.stm

It claims that the keirin bought its way into the olympics by paying the UCI fairly large amounts of money.

LangerDan

Given that practicaly every element of the Olympics, from host city selection to franchising, appears to be a murky and corrupt process then this is quite plausible and not out-of-character for those involved either.

I don't believe that its the first sport to buy its way onto the programme .

Unfortunate but not unprecedented.

Kléber

The Keirin is a rubbish event, just second chance for sprinters to get a medal. But you end up being the best in the world at "riding behind a motorbike then beating other riders", not just the fastest rider in the world.

As for corruption, I'd be very keen to send in some more auditors to the UCI. They never disclosed Armstrong's donations to the UCI, nor where is money went, despite rumours that it was a payment in kind for a backdated medical certificate. There have been allegations too that Verbruggen spent funds buying a house for McQuaid, topped up his salary with cash and was funding McQuaid's election campaign using UCI funds, whereas other candidates had to use private money. There's been little effort to clarify these with transparent accounts, journos get the brush off.

OffTheBackAdam

I'd put the Kierin down as being pretty exciting, the winners are anything but 2nd-rate. Remember that Koichi Nakano, 7 times World Pro Sprint Champion, was a product of Kierin and I think you'll agree that Chris Hoy's no slouch either!
There are some real Mickey-Mouse events in both the Olympics and Worlds, and the loss of the KmTT is deplorable.
I'd happily boot out everything BMX and all MBT bar the proper cross-country races (Especially that event where they start 4-abreast and it's whoever avoids being wiped out on the first turn wins)
Corruption at the UCI? No surprise there, mind you, the entire bidding machinery for these major international sporting events is bent, Olympics, Commonwealth you name it and there are shady deals, back-handers and back-scratching going on.

Jez mon

OffTheBackAdam wrote:

I'd put the Kierin down as being pretty exciting, the winners are anything but 2nd-rate. Remember that Koichi Nakano, 7 times World Pro Sprint Champion, was a product of Kierin and I think you'll agree that Chris Hoy's no slouch either!
There are some real Mickey-Mouse events in both the Olympics and Worlds, and the loss of the KmTT is deplorable.
I'd happily boot out everything BMX and all MBT bar the proper cross-country races (Especially that event where they start 4-abreast and it's whoever avoids being wiped out on the first turn wins)
Corruption at the UCI? No surprise there, mind you, the entire bidding machinery for these major international sporting events is bent, Olympics, Commonwealth you name it and there are shady deals, back-handers and back-scratching going on.

+1

IMO, the idea of booting the Kilo to put in BMX was idiotic

dulldave

Bit of snobbery going on here I think. Most of the olympic cycling events are track-based. When you have the same rider winning oodles of medals then perhaps its time to introduce a few different disciplines.The average punter can't tell one of them from another anyway.

I think introducing BMX was a great idea.

If it were up to me I'd drop another track event to get downhill mtb in there too. These are the things that kids are interested in so if it gets them onto bikes then great.

There's many a rider who started off in BMX.

will3

Possibly naiive quesion:

Why do they have to drop an event to introduce another one? It's not like the kilo and BMX use the same facility or anything.

dulldave

You can't just introduce any event you like.Otherwise the Olympics would go on for 3 months. The UCI had to sacrifice the Kilo in order to introduce BMX.

andyp

will3 wrote:

Possibly naiive quesion:

Why do they have to drop an event to introduce another one? It's not like the kilo and BMX use the same facility or anything.

It's to do with the number of athletes each sport can have. Cycling has a set limit and can't go over it (although as the same riders who do the kilo also tend to ride the sprint and keirin I'm not quite sure I believe this).

Personally I'd have kept the kilo and dropped the road time trials to allow BMX in.

will3

dulldave wrote:

You can't just introduce any event you like.Otherwise the Olympics would go on for 3 months. The UCI had to sacrifice the Kilo in order to introduce BMX.

OK but given the track events and the BMX could run concurrently, why not? It wouldn't take any more time.

iainf72

I wish they still had the 100km TTT. That's a proper event - None of this poncing around on a little track out of the rain.

dulldave

I see what you mean. They must keep a limit on it for good reason I guess.

Kléber

iainf72 wrote:

I wish they still had the 100km TTT. That's a proper event - None of this poncing around on a little track out of the rain.

+1
That was a real man's event.

LangerDan

Kléber wrote:

iainf72 wrote:

I wish they still had the 100km TTT. That's a proper event - None of this poncing around on a little track out of the rain.

+1
That was a real man's event.

The Italians used to attach their 100km TTT riders to the bikes by means of a chest-belt and a clip on the stem to stop them sitting up and buggering up the airflow.

cougie

I think the swimmers have a better deal - a good swimmer can come home with a stack of medals. Far more than the best cyclist could manage. I say boot out some of those and more cycling please !

drenkrom

UCI? Corrupt? You must be joking, certaintly!

fast as fupp

BMX- how can playing on childrens bikes be an olympic sport?

Kléber

That each sport should come together with others and we have national teams in action is fine but you have a total of 301 gold medals up for grabs, when there only 28 sports, meaning over 10 gold medals per sport. Can each sport really have over 10 sub-divisions?

I think many sports have far too many disciplines. Swimming, as mentioned above, allows the same swimmer to collect a haul of medals for essentially the same thing, someone who can swim 50m, can usually do 100m and 200m fine. Add on the different strokes too and there are too many events. In athletics, what about the 200m and 800 races, surely just having 100m, 400m and 1500m is better? As for the hurdles, why?

Cycling may have exciting events but there are too many things on the track. The Madison is bizarre and the points race is basically an indoor criterium.

nathanbloke

There's corruption and there's supporting your sport, and reaping the benefits, which is kind of corruption lite. From the way I read it, the japanese keirin promoters pumped a lot of money into promoting keirin in the UCI world cups and world championships. Now in my mind, corruption is giving powerful individuals backhanders. This doesn't look like Salt Lake City winter olympics, where officials from Salt Lake City went around giving the individuals who decide where to host the olympics money/prostitutes/presents to persuade them to choose them. The japanese pumped money into the sport at an international level, promoting it where it had a lower profile.

I wouldn't call that corruption, I'd call it investing in sport.

Unless I've misread the reports.

sing_for_absolution

Listened to the report this morning on Radio 4. Amusing to hear Verbruggen denying all and then walking away from the reporter, in much the same way he chose to ignore the mass doping of the 90s until his hand was forced by 1998.

And the UCI ignoring the BBC's request for a statement is just rude, but expected.

dave_1

Lemond said it recently... the UCI are corrupt he said...in my opinion Obree should have brought a lawsuit against those feckers at UCI. Fingers crossed the one who turned a blind eye to EPO use and picked on the small guy is dragged through court to the jail cell

flattythehurdler

Faster, Higher, Stronger. Anything else should be kicked out. Anything that needs judging should be out.
Unfortunate middle part of the motto mind.