UCI president Brian Cookson calls for Olympic overhaul

Brian Cookson, the head of cycling's governing body, has called for a radical overhaul of the Olympics to be considered, with some indoor sports such as track cycling, judo and badminton possibly moving to the winter Games.

Cookson, president of the International Cycling Union (UCI), said such a change could take the pressure off the "overheated" summer Olympics and allow those sports to have more events and more medals. The former president of British Cycling has previously suggested the International Olympic Committee look at non-Olympic events such as cyclo-cross and downhill mountain biking being part of the winter Games, but now he believes a debate needs to be held on a whole raft of indoor events.

“If you have a problem with summer Olympics where the whole thing is perceived as over-heated with too many facilities, too many sports, too many competitors and so on, why not look at moving some of the other sports that traditionally take place in the winter in the northern hemisphere indoors,” Cookson said. “So why not look at combat sports like judo, or other indoor sports like badminton, you could even say what about putting track cycling in the winter Olympics?

“If we moved track cycling to the winter Olympics and that allowed us to have more track cycling events and more medals then that could be a pretty good outcome. So let’s talk about those things and see what the stakeholders, the national federations, the teams and the competitors have to say about those options.”

IOC president Thomas Bach has announced a review of the whole Olympic programme with the results to be presented at a special session in Monaco at the end of this year. Cookson said cycling has enjoyed huge success in the Olympics but that sports’ leaders should not just accept the status quo.This may or may not be true but surely it’s not a good idea to insult the rest of the league’s top scorers on the eve of a trip to their place?

He added: “If you look at the London Olympics the lesson from there is the cycling events were incredibly successful from the point of view of attendance and media coverage, and there were huge crowds for the road races. But we shouldn’t just accept the status quo without thinking ‘what are the possibilities here’.

“Thomas Bach has instituted a debate about the format for the Games and let’s think about the winter Olympics, why does it have to be snow and ice? The reality these days is that the base for the winter Olympics the last few times has been two or three hours drive away from the mountains.”

Cookson became the first person to successfully challenge a sitting president of a summer Olympic federation for more than 30 years when he unseated Ireland’s Pat McQuaid last September. Since then he has unveiled a package of reforms of cycling including an independent investigation into allegations of a cover-up of doping by the UCI in the past, more financial transparency, and he is also backing term limits for the UCI presidency making a maximum of eight or 12 years in office.

Cookson also warned that every sport need to be aware that some of their athletes will be doping. He said: “There are two categories of sport, those that have a doping problem and are trying to do something about it and cycling I would suggest is one of the leaders there.

“The second category is those that have a doping problem and are in denial about it because there are forms of doping that affect all forms of sport.

“If you are running your sport and think that you don’t have a doping problem then I think you need a wake-up call because there will be a form of doping that you need to do something about.”