UCI's CADF announces new independent board

Addressing a meeting of the UCI Management Committee, taking place alongside the 2013 UCI Road World Championships in Florence, Cycling Anti-Doping Foundation (CADF) Director Dr. Francesca Rossi announced that the new Foundation Board will be presided over by Dr. George Ruijsch Van Dugteren. The board will also include two legal experts respectively in Swiss law and anti-doping/results management, Maitre Christophe Misteli and Thomas Capdevielle from IAAF, as well as a financial expert Yvan Haymoz.

"The new board does not include any members of the UCI senior management, further strengthening its independence from cycling's governing body," said Dr. Rossi. "I am particularly delighted that Dr. George Ruijsch will be chairing the new Foundation Board of the CADF. Dr. Ruijsch is someone with enormous experience in the field of anti-doping, invaluable to the CADF. He will be accompanied in this role by an internationally recognised and eminent group of experts who will constitute the new board."

The UCI created the (CADF) to manage the activities and funding of its anti-doping programme in 2008.

Dr. Rossi also announced that the CADF, which continues to work closely with the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), has been awarded an ISO certification from an independent standards body for all its activities. The ISO 9001:2008 certification recognises the high quality of CADF's anti-doping activities in the areas of test planning, registered testing pool, and sample collection. Dr. Rossi also confirmed that the supervision of the athletes' biological program remains outsourced to the Athlete Passport Management Unit (APMU) in Lausanne.

In addition, the UCI Management Committee accepted the principles of the stakeholder working group proposals for major reforms of professional cycling submitted by the Professional Cycling Council (PCC). The reforms will start to come into effect in 2015 and will be completed by 2020, after a progressive implementation plan has been put in place.

The proposed reforms include the creation of a first and second division, changes in rider numbers per team and total racing days and the creation of a new UCI-Rider Relations manager position.