The outspoken Irish journalist Paul Kimmage has gone on the offensive against the UCI, the world governing body for cycling.
On Thursday evening, Kimmage filed suit in Switzerland against UCI president Pat McQuaid and former UCI president Hein Verbruggen, accusing the pair of defamation, denigration and "strong suspicions of fraud". This came a week after the UCI announced they were suspending their defamtation case against the journalist, who had previously accused them of being corrupt.
“This is for everyone who stands up for the truth and anyone who exposed the doping problem in the sport and were treated appallingly by McQuaid and Verbruggen over the last 20 years,” Kimmage told Cyclingnews late on Thursday evening.
“It’s justice for the kids who came into the sport and thought they had a chance of achieving their dreams but ended up in coffins; justice for all the kids who wanted to achieve their dreams without doping and were forced out of the sport because they didn’t have a shot and justice for those that were left with a choice, cheat or be cheated.”
The end game is accountability,” Kimmage says when asked what he’s hoping to achieve. “I want them to be held for account for the mess they’ve made of this sport. I don’t want one penny from any of them. Justice, truth, that’s the endgame.”
Call for resignation
More tangible than that, like triple Tour de France winner Greg LeMond, Kimmage has publicly called for Verbruggen and McQuaid to fall on their own swords and the Irishman insists that the sport can only move forward if both men are removed from office.
“That job can't start without McQuaid and Verbruggen being dismissed or resigning from their positions, that’s the very first thing. There’s much more but that the first thing that had to happen.”
Part of Kimmage’s dossier of evidence may include instances of McQuaid persuading individuals to remain silent during the FDA and USADA investigations.
“In May 2010 when Landis went public with his truth McQuaid was going around telling the people being investigated to keep their mouths shut and that everything would be okay and that the investigation was going nowhere. That’s a truth I’m really looking forward to bringing to the court, should we have our day.”
“This is very much for Landis. The case they initiated against me was the result of an interview that I did with Floyd. Everything he said since then has been shown to be true. What Verbruggen and McQuaid have been about since that interview is suppressing the truth.”
For the full story, read Kimmage’s quest for UCI accountability on Cyclingnews.
