Forget everything you think you know about meetings. You think they’re boring, right? Full of spreadsheets and slideshows and people waffling interminably? I mean, sure. Most of them. But not this one – not the UCI’s special day, the annual congress of the governing body of cycling, held alongside the Road World Championships and bringing most of the sport’s prominent stakeholders into one place where everybody is just so amped to talk about sports governance.
We’ve covered this in the past, across most years of Escape Collective’s existence and the place before, and there’s a reason we do it. In part, we’ll admit that we are also a little bit amped to hear people talk about governance. But sometimes you also come across something deeply curious – like the time that the Congress video, usually livestreamed in full punishing detail on Youtube, went missing for more than a week, leaving the entire cycling world in the dark about what had been covered.
You can’t watch the UCI Congress
… and we think we know why.
In that case, it was nothing sinister – just someone choosing to play a Céline Dion song that they didn’t have rights for over a slideshow, leading to a DMCA takedown – but there was another strange mystery nesting within. When Céline was edited out and the video was finally restored, we found out that the UCI had also quietly rewritten its constitution to extend presidential term limits without telling anybody, rushing through a vote and giving David Lappartient another four unopposed years at the helm. And they would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for those meddling kids (/me).
(Actually, they still got away with it, because nobody knew about it until a week after it happened. But at least we now know it happened! That’s something, right?)
UCI quietly extends presidential term limits
A constitutional change at the latest UCI Congress clears the path for another term for David Lappartient.
Anyway: that’s the UCI Congress. A few hundred delegates from every corner of the planet, the full force of the UCI Management Committee, hundreds of slides, and nine hours. While none of that might be what you would call a fun way to spend one’s time, at some level it feels like a worthwhile thing to cover.
Or does it? Only one way to find out. Here’s what went down in Montréal.
0 – 8 mins: Blank screen. Rustling papers. Earnest murmuring. The livestream has begun. The Congress has not.
9 mins: Opening speech in French from a local politician – Christine Black, vice-chair of the executive committee responsible for families, senior citizens, youth, sports and recreation for the City of Montreal. Catchy title.
14 mins: The UCI Management Committee materialises on stage. David Lappartient has some new glasses that look to be made of wood. He starts talking, his microphone cuts out, and he taps it in a stunned ‘is this thing on’ kind of way, which is a pretty fun way to kick things off.
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