THE CLIMBER
When David Lappartient took over the Presidency of the International Cycling Union (UCI) in the autumn of 2017, he had surfed a wave both of political infighting and anti-British sentiment that secured his success and hastened the exit of predecessor Brian Cookson.
In 2015, 2016 and on, into 2017, the Anglo-Saxon ‘takeover’ of cycling – Cookson as UCI president, Team Sky dominating the Tour de France, the confirmation of Yorkshire, not Flanders, Piedmont or Brittany, as a perpetual heartland of cycling – had seemed complete.
In a very short space of time, though, everything changed.
There was Chris Froome’s adverse analytical finding for Salbutamol, the painful Culture, Media and Sport hearings in the British parliament and the Jiffy Bag mystery, Shane Sutton’s comments on the tactical use of TUEs, Cookson’s dramatic exit from the UCI, the looming fall from grace of Welcome to Yorkshire CEO Gary Verity. By January 2018, Britannia, heading inexorably and painfully towards Brexit, wasn’t looking quite such a cool prospect after all.
Put into that context, it’s hardly a surprise that Lappartient ousted Cookson so emphatically the previous autumn. “I knew delegates were ready for change,” the Frenchman said after he was elected in 2017. “I knew I had more than 35 votes. The day before the vote, I told my wife, ‘I will get around 37, 38 votes.’”
Lappartient’s success in the UCI Presidential campaign left Cookson reeling. “It was a big shock for Brian. He still thought he could win,” Lappartient told me
