Only 24 hours after Brian Cookson announced his candidacy for UCI president, the campaigning is already in full flight.

Current UCI president Pat McQuaid sent a letter to national cycling federation presidents, asking questions of Cookson. The Briton has not yet reacted to this, but has spoken on other issues. In an interview with CyclingNews, he was asked why he chose to stand for the office after previously backing the sitting president (this coincidentally being one of the issues raised in McQuaid’s letter).

“When you’re a member of a board or a management committee you are bound by rules of collective responsibility,” Cookson answered. “You express your view as coherently and as forcefully as you can in those meeting and then you decide and agree on what’s going to be the public announcement. I did that at the time. I thought that at the time it was essential to give Pat McQuaid and the UCI some time to resolve some of the issues and clarify things going forward.”

“Things have not improved in the way that I would have hoped. We’re still suffering the same old problems and now we’re in the situation where the deadline is fast approaching for nominations of the presidency and I thought the right thing to do was to say that I am prepared to put my head above the parapet and be a candidate and that’s why I’ve changed my mind.”

On the role of Hein Verbruggen, McQuaid’s predecessor in office and now UCI Honorary President, Cookson commented: “I know that there is still quite a close relationship between Pat and Hein and I’ll leave it for others to judge whether that’s a good thing or not. I’m not in anybody’s camp, I’m an independent candidate and I’ve got the support of my colleagues in British Cycling. I’m not going to make any promises to anybody that I can’t deliver, or do any deals to get elected. I’m going to try to remain an open, honest and transparent candidate.”

Asked about the upcoming campaign, Cookson said: “I don’t want to get into a mudslinging match with Pat. I think we can have a civilised conversation and discussion. My view is that democratic organisations are made stronger by some competition for the leadership in elections and that’s what we’re going to have.”

One important issue in cycling is doping and the anti-doping effort, and Cookson was asked about that as well. Earlier this year, there were plans of forming an independent commission to investigate the UCI’s role in the Lance Armstrong case, but this ultimately amounted to nothing.

“What I am concerned about now is that several months after that was abandoned we’ve not got a workable solution,” Cookson told CyclingNews. “We’ve not got the support of WADA and the other stakeholders in producing an alternative to that. That’s absolutely vital in my mind, to get something underway that has got the support of those other chief stakeholders.”

“I’ve got some ideas on that which I’ll go into when I announce my manifesto but clearly we need to put all that to bed quickly and we need to have an independent enquiry into the allegations against the UCI, and we need to make sure that’s transparent, quick and happens within the space of a few months. We need to restore confidence and integrity in the UCI. I’m not sure that we can do that without radical changes within the UCI.”

Cookson also spoke about developing women’s cycling: “Previously I’ve said that it wasn’t the right time to introduce a minimum wage; but I’ve looked at that again and I think the situation has developed, and what we probably need now is a two tier system where we do set a minimum wage for the highest level of pro teams for women. That may not bring in immediate extra investment in women’s cycling but it will set a baseline by which an aspirational level can be set. I think the time is right to do that.”

“More importantly than that, I’d like to increase levels of participation in women’s cycling. We’ve got an ambition in cycling to get a million more people cycling over the next few years. I’m confident we can do that, not just for the elite level but also the grass roots. The other thing that I’d like to do is, if I’m elected, is make sure that at least one of the UCI Commission Presidents is a woman and that we implement the agreement that we made at the management committee to have at least one woman on every commission. That doesn’t seem to have been implemented so far.”

Some of these comments on women’s cycling are contradicting statements made by Cookson in October 2012 when he, as president of the UCI Road Commission, presented a UCI “masterplan” for women’s cycling.  Back then, Cookson said according to CyclingWeekly.co.uk: “If you passed a rule tomorrow saying that a women's pro team had to have a minimum wage, the first result would be you'd lose half the teams, because they couldn't afford it.”

He also was skeptical about a number of other proposals to promote women’s cycling. On mandating women’s team for men’s ProTeams, Cookson said: “We could look at encouraging ProTeams when they renew their UCI registration, but not necessarily in a compulsory way. A lot of the men's teams are financially challenged anyway. Putting more load on them is not necessarily going to help in this situation. They'd probably say it's the simplest thing to cut off.”

Going further, Cookson put the responsibility to develop female cycling more on broadcasters, media, sponsors and the public than on the sport’s governing body. “Is it the broadcasters' fault or is it the public who are not that interested in watching it?” he asked about the lack of TV coverage of women’s races. “That's the whole conundrum of women's sport, it's the same with women's football: if the public wanted to watch it, there would be more on.”

He also used this to explain the relative lack of sponsors: “Money comes into sport because people want to watch it or follow it, and companies come to see some value to being associated with that sport, because of the profile it gives them and the gain they can get out of it.”

It remains to be seen whether Cookson has changed his opinions and is prepared to make a genuine effort to move not only women’s cycling, but the whole sport in the right direction.