Heavy lies the crown

Unruly fans, rider deaths, wars in Africa... UCI president David Lappartient has a lot of problems in his in-tray. He tells Cyclist how he intends to deal with them

- Words Jeremy Whittle

David Lappartient breezes into his office at UCI headquarters in Aigle, slaps a folder of paperwork on his desk and allows himself a wry smile when he's asked about his failure in the recent International Olympic Commitee presidential race.

'It wasn't exactly according to my wishes,' he shrugs. 'But I'm happy to work with the new leadership.'

The UCI's front man had been widely expected to come close to getting sport's top job, but unusually for an experienced actor in sports governance, who was deemed a strong candidate and who is used to winning elections, it didn't work out. He'd answered the call when the Paris Olympics had been in disarray; he'd been an influential advocate for the rebirth of the women's Tour de France as the Tour de France Femmes; he'd increased the vigilance of technological fraud in cycling; he'd even assisted in the rescue of refugees from Afghanistan. But it wasn't enough.

In the end he got four - yes, four - of the 97 votes, as Zimbabwean Kirsty Coventry swept into the IOC presidency. At least the Frenchman knows that he will doubtless win another term as UCI president when those elections, in which he expects again to stand unopposed, come around.

We speak towards the end of the spring Classics, in which a fan threw a bidon at Matthieu van der Poel during Paris-Roubaix and a rogue spectator joined the women's peloton from the side of the road during the closing moments of Liège-Bastogne-Liège.

'All these cases are clearly unacceptable,' Lappartient says. 'Together with the different cycling families - organisers, teams, riders - we fully condemn what has happened. But when you have millions of people along the roads, at all the races in the world, there can always be crazy people or drunks. Sometimes the fans don't always like riders who win a lot of races.'