A brighter, cleaner future for cycling emerged Tuesday from a two-day summit in Paris formally called “An international meeting against doping in cycling,” The two-day conference ended with UCI president Pat McQuaid, World Anti-Doping Agency president Dick Pound and French minister for sport Roselyne Bachelot jointly signing a two-page document that sets out the parameters for the new “biological passport” that will be introduced in January 2008 and is designed to eliminate the kind of doping problems experienced at this year’s Tour de France.

The outlook is brighter because after months of mudslinging between the various parties, the UCI’s McQuaid, WADA’s Pound and Tour organizer ASO’s Patrice Clerc exchanged pleasantries, with the cantankerous Pound even describing the UCI president as “mon ami McQuaid, my comrade.”

And the future looks cleaner because the object of the roundtable was to agree upon a new tool to combat doping, the so-called biological passport, which will monitor the various blood, urine and hormonal test results for each and every rider contesting cycling’s major events — including the Tour.

Pound says cycling is heading in the right direction.

Photo: Agence France Presse (2007 file photo)

McQuaid said, “I am very happy with the discussions of the past two days. There is lots of work to be done, and I look forward to working with WADA and the ministry to create the new passport program, along with greatly increased out-of-competition testing.”

Pound, whose term as WADA president is winding down, concluded his remarks by saying, I hope historians will look back to the disasters of the past two years and say that cycling looked into a deep chasm and pulled back, and then decided to make this into a new chance. And it happened here [in Paris] on October 23, 2007.”

The main points in establishing the biological passport — which will actually be a detailed electronic record of riders’ various blood and urine tests, along with parameters collected in the past — are:

1. The UCI, WADA and the French ministry will set up a working group by the end of this month to define the project’s logistical and judicial conditions.2. The three parties will create a scientific commission composed of experts designated by the UCI and WADA to analyze the results of the biological passport and provide their recommendations to the two agencies.3. The three parties will see that the project will result in both regulatory consequences (such as riders not being allowed to start races) and disciplinary consequences (such as suspensions resulting from forensic analysis of parameters in the passport program).4. The UCI will establish the necessary ground rules to enable the biological passport to be introduced into all the ProTour teams, and those other teams likely to benefit from wild-card status in the major races — a list that will be agreed upon by the working group.5. The UCI will put in place, from 2008, the necessary regulatory programs so that the various sporting and disciplinary consequences can be derived from the biological passport.6. The cost of the programs will be assured by the three parties, along with funding from the ProTour teams and other entities.7. A committee to monitor and evaluate the project will be composed of members from the UCI, WADA and French ministry, along with the other parties present — the international teams, race organizers and riders associations. The evaluation will take place in the fall of 2008.

Lastly, the three parties agreed to formalize a method of exchanging information between the various public authorities in France to increase the fight against the traffic of banned drugs.

ASO’s Clerc, who has been most critical of the UCI’s handling of the regulatory and judicial issues associated with doping cases, said that the anti-doping project represented “a new start” for cycling.

That in itself was a breakthrough for a sport that was committing the equivalent of mass suicide. But after two days in the same room, with the “biological passport” as catalyst, Clerc, Pound and McQuaid have buried the hatchet and agreed to reestablish cycling as the proud, beautiful and exciting sport it is meant to be.