IT’S UCI ELECTION YEAR

The election for UCI president will take place at the organisation’s annual congress, which is currently scheduled for September, to coincide with the World Championships. The last two, in 2013 and 2017, have been tumultuous affairs. In 2013, Brian Cookson beat the controversial incumbent Pat McQuaid in a chaotic vote. The election used to be a quiet formality, but that year it was rocked by the aftershocks of the Lance Armstrong scandal, and McQuaid was ousted. Four years later Cookson was beaten in turn by David Lappartient after going into the election confident that he’d accumulated enough support from the voting delegates to sail to victory; instead his challenge ran aground when it turned out not everybody who’d promised him a vote had actually voted for him.

However, a UCI insider told Procycling that as things currently stand, it would be surprising if anybody stood against Lappartient this year. The Frenchman has the backing of the European confederation and influential figures like Igor Makarov, honorary president of the Russian federation and a current member of the Management Committee, and Dr Mohamed Wagih Azzam, the president of the African confederation. If somebody stands, there are 45 voting delegates for the election - 15 from the European confederation, nine each from Africa, America and Asia, and three from Oceania. Lappartient can currently confidently count on a minimum of 24 votes, which means a challenger is unlikely to risk standing this year. The chances are that the earliest challenge to Lappartient is likely not to happen until 2025, though as the previous two elections have demonstrated, surprises sometimes happen, and a year is a long time in cycling politics.