Cycling Politics
Guimard was president of the professional riders' body, the Union Nationale des Coureurs Professionels, when he was 23. He and another team manager, Roger Legeay, created the AIGCP, to represent teams in negotiations.
Guimard failed to win election in 2009 as president of the Fédération Française de Cyclisme, the body representing France at the Union Cycliste Internationale. His campaign accused the federation's management of being clannish, eliminating those who did not please it and coopting those who did. He called for an audit of the federation's accounts. Professional riders, he said, should deposit a year of their salary as a suspended credit card payment, as potential payment for any doping offence.
He came third of the three candidates, with seven votes against the 347 for David Lappartient and 265 for Michel Callot.
Read more about this topic: Cyrille Guimard
Famous quotes containing the words cycling and/or politics:
“If all feeling for grace and beauty were not extinguished in the mass of mankind at the actual moment, such a method of locomotion as cycling could never have found acceptance; no man or woman with the slightest aesthetic sense could assume the ludicrous position necessary for it.”
—Ouida [Marie Louise De La Ramée] (18391908)
“Philosophy, astronomy, and politics were marked at zero, I remember. Botany variable, geology profound as regards the mud stains from any region within fifty miles of town, chemistry eccentric, anatomy unsystematic, sensational literature and crime records unique, violin player, boxer, swordsman, lawyer, and self-poisoner by cocaine and tobacco.”
—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (18591930)