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:
“From the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”
—Charles Darwin (1809–1882)
“A baby changes your dinner party conversation from politics to poops.”
—Maurice Johnstone (20th century)