UCI President Brian Cookson has hit back at criticism and suspicion surrounding the UCI's handling of the Denis Menchov Biological Passport case, insisting he has to balance transparency with legally binding procedures.
News of Menchov's suspension and loss of results from the 2009, 2010 and 2012 Tours de France, broke with the UCI surreptitiously slipping the news into a summary of doping cases that was published on July 10 instead of issuing a press release.
Cookson was at the Tour de France for the presentation of the La Course, the women's race on the last day of the race in Paris and the Tour de l'Avenir. However he was grilled on the Menchov case and his election claims of working with more transparency compared to former president Pat McQuaid.
"The first thing I want to say is that this was entirely in line with normal procedure. In the case of Menchov, he accepted the sanction and when there is acceptance, there is a process that follows and that is what was carried out," Cookson said.
"There's no new policy, change in tactic or strategy. That's what we do. I think we have to keep in mind that a guy who was doping has been caught through the Biological Passport. It's a success story but we have to handle these cases correctly and that's what we did."