After a call from two riders, Cycling Canada had to review its copy and make a clean sweep of its committee responsible for composing the national team for the Grands Prix Cyclistes de Québec et de Montréal (GPCQM), presented on September 8 and 10.
“Revised and corrected”: these are the epithets that qualify the new Canadian formation. Unveiled in early July, the initial selection of seven runners was extensively changed at midnight minus one.
James Piccoli and Carson Miles, the authors of the appeal, believed, among other things, that one of the five members of the selection committee was in a conflict of interest as the coach of one of the chosen athletes.
Submitted to the Sport Dispute Resolution Center of Canada, their dispute was the subject of a settlement agreement with Cycling Canada under the authority of the neutral arbitrator-mediator assigned to the case.
Cycling Canada (CCC) has committed to canceling its selection to constitute a new one which would be established by a committee entirely composed of new members.
The panel, whose six participants were chosen by the high performance committee, had to redo the process according to the policy already published, but with additional instructions.
Among these, age should not be a factor considered to distinguish cyclists who were discretionary choices.
Any member of the High Performance Committee having a “coaching or financial relationship” with a candidate was also required to declare this and recuse themselves from “all discussions and selection decisions”.
This last instruction was a direct response to Piccoli’s main grievance, namely that Evan Russell is a protege of national coach Richard Wooles, a member of the original committee.
In the end, three of the originally chosen starters, including Evan Russell, were dropped in favor of three new ones. If we include the three reservists, half of the team has changed identity.
Unless there is a new call by September 3, the riders who will represent Canada in the only two WorldTour events contested in America will be Quebecers Pier-André Côté, Matisse Julien, Félix Hamel, Nicholas Rivard, Robin Plamondon and Albertan Quentin Cowan.
National champion Nickolas Zukowsky, of Sainte-Lucie-des-Laurentides, was supposed to be there too, but the Epstein-Barr virus, which has been slowing him down for several months, he recently learned, will prevent him. Ontario veteran Benjamin Perry has been contacted to replace him.
Ironically, Piccoli and Miles therefore failed to slip into the starting group of seven, but they are nevertheless part of the reserves, which was not the case before their call.
The 31-year-old Montrealer believed he had partially achieved his goals under the agreement reached on August 24. The former winner of the Tour de Beauce is no longer sure. He explains that he signed the same type of document with Cycling Canada before the Tokyo Olympics, for which he had not been chosen.
“They said, ‘We’re going to try to talk with riders to improve [things], to make it fair and avoid conflicts of interest.’ In my opinion, it didn’t really work last time. I have no guarantee that it will work this time. »
“I’ve been an athlete with Cycling Canada for five, six, seven years and nothing has changed,” he added. It’s even worse than before. Honestly, there are also other athletes who are a bit tired [of the situation]. »
A few years earlier, Piccoli had lost two internal appeal processes for teams for the Tour of Alberta and the GPCQM. “I really think they don’t like me!” They just don’t want me to be part of the selections. »
Kris Westwood, director of high performance (DHP) at CCC, flatly rejects this impression of relentlessness, arguing that the selectors involved in the contentious cases in Piccoli’s eyes were never the same.
“Honestly, we have no prejudice against James. You always have to ask yourself, what’s the point of a sport not fielding the best riders for an event? »
Regarding the appeal itself, Westwood, a member of the first committee, speaks of a “compromise between the two parties”.
“We had the choice to make an agreement like that or to go directly to arbitration. In an agreement like this, there is no fault attributed to anyone. […] We thought it was better to negotiate a solution than to go to arbitration. »
The DHH believes that the process was followed well, but that the wording of the policy could have been refined. For CCC, GPCQMs are a “development” project, a fuzzy concept in Piccoli’s eyes.
“It always revolves around the exact definition of certain words,” pleaded Westwood. This is where there were perhaps some gaps in the selection criteria. I would say the selection decision was correct, but some words were overlooked in the criteria. We learned that lesson for next year. »
Nevertheless, half of the formation was changed at the end of the call. Is it a disappointment?
“It’s not a disappointment,” replied the technician. We always want to select and apply a process in the best possible way and make decisions that are fair to everyone. But I imagine it’s a big disappointment for the athletes who were taken off the team. »
Quebecer Philippe Jacob, 20-year-old Canadian champion, was one of the three cyclists discarded. Hamel and Plamondon, for their part, received an unexpected invitation.
In Westwood’s view, the new committee simply interpreted the criteria differently. “Even if we try to write something that is 100% black and white, there is always interpretation that goes into it, especially on the bike. »
As for the conflict of interest raised by the applicants, the DHP clarifies: “There was a perception of conflict, that does not mean that there was a real conflict of interest. This is partly why we entered into an agreement. »
In it, CCC pledged that a coach with a professional relationship with a candidate would recuse himself in the future. Westwood points out that it’s not always straightforward.
“The difficulty for federations making selections is to find a balance between expertise and conflicts of interest. Because everyone who is an expert in a field in sport has conflicts of interest. »
This complexity is illustrated by the ad hoc committee convened in an emergency by CCC. It was made up of ex-road runners Kirsti Lay and Denise Ramsden, chiropractor and trainer Aroussen Laflamme, young road professional Adèle Normand, physiotherapist and mountain bike team manager Tara Lazarski and sports commissioner. International Cycling Union Michael Pinkoski. He issued his decision on August 25, the day after the agreement was reached.
“I think they weren’t people who knew a lot about road cycling,” Piccoli said. It was just a high performance panel from Cycling Canada that came from all disciplines. »
Piccoli also deplores an erroneous interpretation of one of the original criteria, namely “a top 5 (day, stage or general classification) of a UCI EuropeTour event category U23 or higher” which was worth an automatic selection to a cyclist born between 2001 and 2004. Two athletes achieved this standard in a 4 km team time trial in a stage race.
“Obviously it’s not the same type of race. They were selected automatically despite the fact that the effort was two minutes, while the cycling Grands Prix is 5:30 hours! »
Resigned, Piccoli has no intention of appealing again. At the time of the interview, he was rather busy packing his bags at home in Andorra, in view of a month and a half tour of China to compete in four races there under the colors of his professional team.
Hugo Houle, who had his battles with the management of Cycling Canada, the last of which three weeks ago at the Glasgow Worlds, where he deplored the conditions in which the road team was housed, was not not a candidate for this selection since he is a member of the Israel-Premier Tech formation. He will therefore be part of the GPCQM, just like his teammates Michael Woods, Guillaume Boivin and Derek Gee. A total of nine Canadian cyclists are expected to start in Quebec and Montreal.
