The Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) welcomes the work of the British Parliament’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) Select Committee as set out in its report “Combatting doping in sport”.
The conclusions in the Report (insofar as cycling is concerned) support and reinforce the UCI’s concerns about the potential abuse of Therapeutic Use Exemptions (TUEs), in particular with respect to corticosteroids. As noted by the DCMS, these concerns were first raised in the Cycling Independent Reform Commission’s report in 2015 and appear to remain an issue today.
As far as TUEs are concerned, the UCI reinforced its rules in 2014 to ensure that the UCI TUE Committee is composed of multiple independent experts in the fields of clinical, sports and exercise medicine and that a TUE can only be granted if there is unanimity amongst the three members of the TUE Committee Panel. Having said that, the UCI fully supports the DCMS’s conclusion that “[t]he TUE system needs to be kept under permanent review” and the UCI will continue to consider possible improvements that could be made to its TUE system.
The UCI also shares the DCMS’s concerns about the use of both corticosteroids and the painkiller Tramadol in cycling. As a signatory of the World Anti-Doping Code, the UCI is bound by the current Prohibited List, however the UCI has requested, and will continue to request, that the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) take additional steps in relation to corticosteroids and Tramadol. This is a subject that is particularly important to the UCI’s President, who will discuss the issue with the WADA President at their next meeting in April. In addition to this, WADA has set up a working group on the matter and the UCI, through the Cycling Anti-Doping Foundation (CADF), is in touch with this working group.