On 5 July 2007 – at the dawn of the 94th Tour de France, 7 teams convened to found the Mouvement Pour un Cyclisme Crédible (MPCC). Amongst those was Bouygues Telecom, which then became Team Europcar and Direct Energie. One of its most important figures Thomas Voeckler claims the label of “founding member”. In this interview, he expresses his reservations on the changed landscape of the movement highlighted by the admission of many new members three years ago.
On 24 October 2012, day of the Tour de France official route announcement in Paris, the race organizer and AIOCC chairman Christian Prudhomme stated: “We support what the managers of MPCC teams do. It is the future. The rules they commit to are stricter than those of the UCI’s but also WADA’s. Abiding to draconian rules is the high way to a cultural change.”
Some of these new members have since left MPCC, either in their own volition or as a result of their non-compliance with the rules they committed to follow. Thomas Voeckler disagrees: “Those teams were required to come, this was no decision of their own.”
In the face of the antidoping developments, the former Tour de France yellow jersey holder stays cautious: “This is great if cycling remains one step ahead of the others sports but if this is no longer the case, it means things are moving forward too in those fields.” In 2015, Athletics, Weightlifting and Baseball faced more positive tests than Cycling. According to the latest available WADA testing figures, Athletics and Football were the only sports to control a greater volume of athletes than Cycling.