After leaving the shores of placid Lake Geneva and driving a handful of kilometers south of Montreux, views of the Swiss Alps open up as you reach Aigle, a storybook town surrounded by the rolling Chablais vineyards. This small Swiss community, with its own turreted 13th century castle, cobbled streets and white-painted, tile-roofed houses, is home to the $20 million World Cycling Center, a curved, stainless-steel-sided building on a picturesque site next to the Rhône River

Besides housing the 70-strong staff of the Union Cycliste Internationale, the WCC also accommodates a 200-meter wood velodrome, a 7500-square-foot gymnastics hall, a 2150-square-foot weights room, conference rooms, classrooms, a 100-seat restaurant and 18,000 square feet of all-purpose space for exhibitions and receptions.

On the grounds are a 350-meter BMX track and the UCI’s own nascent vineyard. Cross-country and downhill mountain-bikers can practice on courses at the nearby ski resorts of Leysin and Château d’Oex, while road racers can train on the beautifully paved Swiss roads that head into the mountains to the west and east.

It was to this a lavish facility that VeloNewswas invited a few weeks ago to visit with the UCI’s new president, Pat McQuaid, the eldest of 10 children from a Dublin family. He brings to what is perhaps the most challenging job in cycling a lifetime’s of experience as a competitor, coach, teacher, race organizer and administrator — including eight years as head of the UCI’s international road commission, an unpaid position.

Even before he won a 31-11 vote at the UCI congress in Madrid last September, McQuaid’s candidature withstood court actions and ethical challenges from other UCI officials. But the robust 56-year-old Irishman never blinked, even when his election was greeted the next day in L'Equipe by a banner headline, “A shadow over McQuaid.”

The French sports paper claimed that McQuaid would be a lapdog to outgoing president Hein Verbruggen — whose motives L'Equipe never stopped questioning through his 14-year tenure. The paper justified its gloomy outlook by pointing out that despite stepping down as president, Verbruggen had been co-opted to the UCI’s management committee and ProTour council, even though the main reason for this was to enable the Dutchman to retain his coordination role for the International Olympic Committee at the 2008 Beijing Games.

Now, it seems, much of the European media (and the organizers of the three grand tours) are ready to continue their trashing of the UCI presidency. McQuaid has had no “honeymoon” period. The hits keep on coming on the much-maligned UCI ProTour along with repeated doping scandals that keep cycling in the headlines for all the wrong reasons.

Certainly McQuaid’s most urgent challenge is the standoff between the ProTour Council and the grand tour organizers — headed by Patrice Clerc, chairman and managing director of Tour de France organizer ASO — that has a chance of being resolved at a meeting at the WCC in mid-January.

Givenhis controversial entry into the international limelight, McQuaid was remarkablycool, optimistic and candid in an interview with VeloNewsconducted in hisspacious top-floor office at the WCC. With a panorama of the snow-peakedSavoy Alps across the fast-flowing gray waters of the Rhône River,the new UCI president can see during his 11-hour working days the sortof landscapes where every cyclist loves riding. He likes the view.Our interview with UCI president Pat McQuaid is part of a much largerstory on the UCI featured in theJanuary 2, 2006issue of VeloNews, now on sale at newsstands and bike shops nationwide.

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VeloNews: How does it feel to be at the top of the cycling world?

Pat McQuaid: I have to say to you it feels good. Cycling has been my life. It’s in the family — I daren’t say it’s in the blood because that’s not a good word to use in cycling terms these days — but cycling’s in the family, and I’ve been involved in every aspect of the sport, and to get the opportunity to become president and to put my stamp on [cycling] over the coming years is a huge honor, a big responsibility and a big challenge, but something I’m really looking forward to.

VN: Have you felt that you were going to take this position when you started in the administration side of the sport?

PM: No. To be quite honest with you, even when I came on to the UCI eight years ago, I didn’t think that I would one day end up president of the UCI. It wasn’t necessarily an ambition of mine. I was always happy doing what I was doing, whether it was being president of my federation for four years, whether it was bringing the Tour de France to Ireland or organizing Nissan Classics, or organizing [the Tour de] Langkawi. Whatever activity I was at, I was always happy doing it. I never looked much beyond it.

But when I got onto the UCI management committee eight years ago, the first day I was appointed president of the road commission. I felt I was honored just being a new member of the management committee to be given such an important commission to look after, and for the past eight years I’ve enjoyed very much all the work involved in that. But I didn’t think that was necessarily leading towards becoming president of the UCI.

It was only really two years ago when Hein Verbruggen strengthened what he had said at the [previous] UCI congress that this would be his last mandate, and he spoke to the board and said, “I am stepping down in two years’ time, and it’s the responsibility of the board of management to start looking and finding a successor.”At that moment I suddenly realized I could possibly be in line to be his successor. Things moved fairly rapidly after that, and I have sort of prepared myself for it. And then the board indeed prepared me for it by bringing me over [to Switzerland] six months in advance, which was a board decision.

VN: What do you see as your mandate? What would you like to bring to cycling?

PM: My mandate has really got to come from the sporting side, because of my background, experience and knowledge. What I would want to do is improve the sports side on a global basis … the drugs situation and the use of banned substances is something that I feel very strongly about and something that I would hope to able to tackle and try and improve….

What I very much want to do is globalize the sport. Because I’ve my experience of working in cycling outside Europe and in Asia, I do have the knowledge that the sport can develop hugely outside Europe. I was very much behind the ProTour, not so much purely for the introduction of the ProTour, but the overall reforms which brought about the five Continental Calendars. As president of the road commission, I could see these calendars could have a huge possibility to develop the sport outside Europe.

Requirements in Africa are completely different from requirements in America or in Asia. So we can look at each one, see what has to be done and tackle them independently. Prior to that, the UCI calendar was more a global calendar, and everything was a little bit lost because it was dominated by Europe and the other continents didn’t get much of a look in.

Now we are coming up with projects in each continent. We have the World Cycling Center here in Aigle. And we’re developing [similar] continental centers, not necessarily one per continent, but take Africa for instance where we have one already up and running in South Africa. That serves the needs for most of Africa, but it would be more efficient to have also one in northern Africa.

Then below that [level] we’re hoping to get national training centers. We’re starting on that, particularly in Eastern Europe [including Ukraine and Moldavia]…. The UCI has an active involvement in all of these centers, be it with a coach or with assistance for equipment, and each one reports directly to the World Cycling Center.

The idea is that we can develop talent on a national basis, so when the coaches spot that they’ve got somebody a little bit special, they send them to the continental center, from where the coaches can send him to the World Cycling Center. The idea is that we get the top-level riders producing world champions. It’s a pyramid system.

VN: This first year of the new system has only tested the waters in terms of competition, because it’s ended up with a Brazilian, Murilo Fischer, winning the European Tour, and then in North America, the U.S. riders don’t even talk about the American Calendar because they’re not interested in riding in Uruguay, or wherever.

PM: That’ll change in the coming years, and I think you will see Americans going down into South America; plus, more international races will develop on the North American calendar. I’ve always been, not critical, but I’ve said it openly to USCF and now USA Cycling people over the eight years I’ve been president of the road commission that they’re aren’t enough international races in North America. And now with the American continental calendar, USA Cycling realizes that if they want their riders to do well in the American Tour then they need to develop more races.

As for the Brazilian winning the European Tour, the calendar is open to everyone who races on that continent, and that same Brazilian won the world “B” championships road race in Aigle two years ago and qualified for the Athens Olympic Games, so he has come through our developmental system. The structure is there.

VN: In many ways the road takes care of itself, and track you’re developing with a track here in Aigle while the world’s and World Cup have been moved to the winter months to give them more emphasis. Will the international centers you’re going to develop have a track facility?

PM: They’ll all be attached to a track facility, and there are many tracks being built. Our track coordinator [Gilles Peruzzi] was in China last week looking at the development of four new tracks that are being built there. There’s another [center] we’re looking at in Colombia, which will be attached to a track.

The road does take care of itself, but having said that we need to develop the road calendar in Asia, America and Africa, where there’s a huge amount of work to be done, but there’s an increasingly bigger amount of work needs to be done on the track. That’s why we need to have the track riders, and continuous track development, [not only] to maintain our Olympic medals but also to impress upon nations the importance of track.

Australia is the best example of that because virtually all of their top road riders come from the track system. That’s the way you’re going to get riders into cycling through the track and then on to the road.

VN: And BMX to a certain extent …

PM: Yes, getting BMX into the Olympics has opened up a whole new area of opportunity for the UCI, and our BMX coordinator [Johan Lindström] is now working hard with federations, assisting them in developing BMX tracks. For instance, a few weeks ago we had the new president and vice president of the Turkish federation here for discussions, and they went back to talk with the authorities on building some BMX tracks. And we have track builders who can come in and help with the finer points of that work.

VN: And then there’s mountain biking …

PM: Mountain biking is a big one, but it’s still problematic. It boomed greatly and then went down. We had problems with the World Cup when [title sponsor] Grundig pulled out and we never really replaced them. Then we offered it last year to a company who said they were going to run it, and that hasn’t worked out, and now we’re more or less taking over the World Cup ourselves.

So it’s an area that still needs development. The problem I think with mountain biking is that because it came from people who wanted to be out in the countryside, and their mindset wasn’t necessarily one of being involved in a structured sport, they resisted when we tried to structure it, and it didn’t really work. But I think at this stage that they probably will accept that proper structure within the sport.

VN: In some ways, it’s still a renegade sport, with 24-hour races for example having unofficial world championships …

PM: … and it’s a bit like BMX, because in the States and South America you’ve got BMX organizations that have developed the sport in their countries, own tracks and are commercial organizations, and then there are the federations that haven’t had an involvement until now. Suddenly, they have a responsibility for BMX because it’s an Olympic sport; and to try and get those two groups working together in a harmonious way isn’t always easy. And we’re currently acting as arbiters so to speak to try and get them working in the right direction.

VN: As the UCI president you now have responsibility for all areas of the sport, but do you have any personal experience of off-road competition?

PM: I’ve been to mountain bike world championships and World Cup events, but I haven’t had the experience I’ve had with road being an organizer of road races. But the mountain bike department here and the mountain bike commission, which has been led by Daniel Baal for the past eight years, I can sit down with them and put some ideas and principles that have come from my experience on the road into mountain biking.

VN: What are the other divisions you are responsible for?

PM: Another one is “cycling for all,” which is one the UCI has got in to in recent years. We have the Golden Bike series that tries to tap into that market of the cyclists who don’t necessarily want to race as part of a federation, but want to ride [organized] events.

I’m trying to broaden the UCI brand, the UCI name, as being the international federation for cycling, not just those disciplines that are in the Olympics, but other aspects of cycling. And “cycling for all” is a hugely developing area, but is currently growing without any structures. We’ve now added the UCI Golden Bike series name to a number of events that take place throughout the world, and we’re working with each of those organizers trying to bring them all up to the same level and create a certain amount of uniformity. I’m talking about things like security and safety measures, because you can’t let 20,000 people out onto a road and expect them all to safely turn up at the end….

So we’re starting to lay down certain guidelines and standards for those races, and we would hope that would then extend into a lot more of those events. We have had forums here where we invite selected people from around Europe who organize these events, to see how we can work together.

And then the biggest area we have here is the World Cycling Center, where we have the athletes come on a regular basis for all the different disciplines. Most of them come for eight months, for a full [racing] season.

First sod for the center was turned by [then Olympic president Juan Antonio] Samaranch in 2000. It was opened in 2002, and we’ve had 275 athletes come through from 72 countries in that period. And we’ve produced quite a few world championship and Olympic medals.

VN: And you have athletes who come to train here for a short time before world championships, like some of the U.S. women’s road team did this year …

PM: Yes, for instance, we had the New Zealand team here for three weeks before the junior world championships. The Australian team have trained here. We’ve got the Italian track team training here. We’ve got a Belgian team coming in to prepare for the track World Cups. In the summer, we even had the Dutch speed-skating team here — they trained on the track, and then they went mountain biking and on the road during the day. They arrived with a truck full of all sorts of extra weight-lifting gear to put into the weights room, and spent a month here.

VN: Cycling is still not one of the bigger international sports, like tennis or soccer. But in terms of the number of countries that compete and the number of people that watch the Tour de France on TV, cycling should be one of those sports …

PM: … certainly, it does get huge coverage because it is a very TV-orientated spectacle, and while you say it’s not soccer or tennis, it is practiced throughout the world. This brings us to the ProTour, which is what we introduced to compete with [soccer’s] Champions League and the high-level tennis championships of the world … and hopefully we can sort out the little details still to be sorted out with the ProTour, so we can go in that direction. And the ProTour will be the Champions League of cycling.

And I would still hope, whether it will happen within my lifetime or not, we can build up the calendar within the other continents. In Asia, for instance, where there’s a calendar now developing quite rapidly, a couple of the top Irish riders David McCann and Paul Griffin … have been racing all season with the Giant Asia team, racing all around Asia, and I could see in a couple of years’ time that calendar can develop to a high level. And once you get lots of competition within the continent then the levels go up.

At the world championships this year we did come under some criticism for reducing the number of riders in the top countries from 12 down to nine in the elite men’s race, and so introduced more places for countries like Iran and Argentina. We may not have got it 100-percent correct, and maybe six riders from Iran and Argentina was too much, but I would make no apologies for that.

The main reason for the change was to make the race more competitive, because it had become too controlled by the big teams, but we also wanted to give more countries the opportunity of racing at the highest level. The idea is that in time it [will help] the sport develop in those countries. I mean, three Iranians started that race in Madrid and one of them finished it [Mahdi Sohrabi in 136th place], so you can’t say they don’t deserve to be there.

In Argentina, for example, there are six or seven velodromes, and cycling’s a very big sport there, and this year they got six qualifiers instead of one because of their position in the America Tour, and that has to be a big boost to cycling in Argentina. There’s no reason why the sport won’t get bigger in South America. Argentina, Brazil, [Venezuela] and Colombia are currently producing riders for the European professional teams, so if the sport continues to develop in those countries then it’s going to become more global as a result.

VN: You’ve been to many of the developing cycling countries as an organizer and head of the road commission, so how can you see yourself as UCI president accelerating that internationalization?

PM: I can see immediately in the work that is going on in the offices here, how the mindset is changing within the staff directly involved. They’re currently thinking of projects for Africa and Asia that five years ago they wouldn’t have thought beyond Europe. And we’ve now appointed a liaison person for each of the continents who’s going to work for the UCI to try and assist the development in the continents, a person who can fly to different countries to talk to a federation, or talk to an organizer to assist and develop his race, paid for by the UCI.

Also, our past president Hein Verbruggen in his role as coordinator for the Olympic Games in Beijing, during two weeks out there — and he just reported to me yesterday — has had two days of meetings with various state governors and city folk with a view to developing more bike race in China. And there’s an opening there for a large number of races, not just two of three, developing in the next couple of years. And the rest of Asia is much the same.

How can I personally accelerate it? I can do so by putting a lot of pressure on my staff to think outside the box and work outside Europe. We just need to service the federations in Western Europe as best we can, but we need to come up with ideas and assistance for all of those countries outside of Western Europe. And that’s something I’m hugely interested in, and something I’ll continue to push and push.

VN: Many Americans say that America is not really one continent, but two, north and south, and in terms of cycling they are very different cultures. Can you envision the American calendar being split into two?

PM: That’s something that has come up since the UCI constitution was first formed, and indeed many other international federations have the same situation. I don’t see it as something that’s going to happen in the short term. There is some political pressure to do so, particularly from North America, but I’d be more inclined to think of North America as a huge continent of its own, with states like Texas and Kansas that are the size of countries in Europe. And when all of those states have [UCI] races of their own, and the sport is that big in North America that it’s like a continent of its own, then we would consider splitting it all right. But that’s a long way away.

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Part 2 of John Wilcockson’s interview with UCI president Pat McQuaid will appear on VeloNews.com on Sunday, December 25, 2005. - Editor