It's a fucking insult to our intelligence,' he says. 'His excuse that his meat was contaminated is laughable. Kimmage is also disparaging about Contador's justification for his Clenbuterol positive test at this year's Tour de France. If they don’t, they won’t have the respect of the public and things won't change.' We can't change things without upsetting people. 'I'm losing my patience with the good guys too. People need to acknowledge their part in it all and there should be no part of them in the sport,' he argues. 'It's too easy to say lets all move on folks, when there has been no accountability for the last 20 years.

Kimmage categorically refutes the idea that the sport needs to some how forget about its recent past and move forward. He hasn’t said anything we didn’t know, he's given us more detail and painted a bigger picture because he was higher up the food chain. Because he's saying the same stuff that Frankie Andreu said, what Betsy Andreu said, that Emma O'Reilly said. Pat has recently said that doping in the sport is not as bad as it was a few years ago.'Īrmstrong and many of his former teammates have rubbished Landis' accusations but Kimmage is convinced he is believable. Now, were getting select positives, select reading of the biological passport and it’s not good enough. It's not just me saying it, it's Pierre Bordry, and WADA. 'When I say managed, I'd say there's been a distinct change in attitude since Lance Armstrong came back. Then we went from the problem of doping being addressed, to the problem being managed.' Pat even criticised Vinokourov's association with Dr.

And there was a sense that things would change and the problem would be addressed. 'After the 2006 Tour de France, when Landis was caught, ASO said they weren't having any more of this and wanted zero tolerance.

The UCI is still part of the problem, not the solution and I think that’s the saddest aspect of it.' Twenty years later absolutely nothing has changed. So the UCI was my target when I sat down to write the book. But I recognized that the sport had a real problem with doping and the problem was made worse by the UCI. He dismissed the book saying that only the small guys dope. 'When Rough Ride was published in 1990, Pat McQuaid was an ambitious Irish cycling official, making his way through the halls of power and one of my sternest critics at the time.

Kimmage has always been a fierce critic of how cycling is run by the UCI, believing the sports governing body is responsible for many of the current problems. 'Much as I've tried to pretend I've moved on, I still ride my bike and love the sport,' he admits. I went on television in 1996 and was very critical of Olympic champion Michele Smith but if I hadn't written Rough Ride, I'd have left myself wide open to every kind of criticism about being hypocritical.' 'I only appreciated the importance of it for my own career as a journalist a few years later.

Rough Ride by Paul Kimmage