The findings of the Independent Reform Commission (CIRC), set-up at a cost of $3 million (£2 million/€2.5 million), to investigate historical allegations of drug-taking in the peleton between 1998 and 2013 is due to be published soon.

"There'll be a lot of uncomfortable reading," said Cookson at the UCI Track Cycling World Championships currently taking place at the Vélodrome de Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines in Paris. 

"I think we should all prepare ourselves for that." 

The era that the CRIC, chaired by Switzerland's former State Prosecutor Dick Marty, is investigating includes not only Armstrong but also the Festina affair, a series of doping scandals, doping investigations and confessions by riders to doping that occurred during and after the 1998 Tour de France.

It also encompasses a period which included Operación Puerto, code name of a Spanish Police operation against the doping network of Doctor Eufemiano Fuentes, started in May 2006, resulting in a scandal that allegedly involved several top cyclists, including Spain's two-time Tour de France winner Alberto Contador, although he was later cleared by both the Spanish courts and the UCI.

Lance Armstrong is one of the few people have publicly announced they have given evidence to the Independent Reform Commission set-up by the UCI ©Getty Images

But, inevitably, much of the findings from the report will centre on what Armstrong, stripped of his seven Tour de France titles after he admitting doping throughout his career, told the CRIC.

"I know that Lance has talked to the Commission because his lawyers announced it and he himself said it," said Cookson. 

"Lance Armstrong always has an agenda and I don't want to say any more until we see what he's said to the Commission."

Cookson claims he does not know whether former UCI Presidents Hein Verbruggen or Pat McQuaid, who he succeeded in September 2013, have given evidence. 

"I don't know anybody else who has talked to the Commission apart from one or two individuals that have come up to me and told me that they have," he said.

"We can probably draw some conclusions from lack of contribution, as much as we can draw conclusions from positive contributions to the process.

"Equally we may well be in a position to take disciplinary action against people who are named by more than one source as having done something that is against the regulations."

Brian Cookson claims he does not know if his predecessor as UCI President Hein Verbruggen and Pat McQuaid are among those to have given evidence to the panel
©Getty Images

Cookson has not seen the report but is not expecting too much to emerge that is not already in the public domain following the proliferation of biographies, documentaries and newspaper investigations that have been published and broadcast in recent years, especially since Armstrong was banned for life.  

"I don't think there's going to be a lot of new revelations, because I think mostly we've got a pretty good idea of what was happening and how widespread the problems were," he said. 

But, whatever is in the report, Cookson has pledged there will be no cover-ups.

"We will publish the report that is given to us by CIRC.

"We're not going to get into a FIFA-type situation of arguing about the report.

"If they want to redact anything, they can redact it.

"They may well give us some unredacted information as well, but the report that they give us will be the report that they say is able to go into the public domain.

"But I don't think there's any other sport that has opened itself up to that level of scrutiny."

Contact the writer of this story at [email protected]


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