In an interview with The Guardian newspaper, UCI president Brian Cookson says that the upcoming CIRC (Cycling Independent Reform Commission) report will make for uncomfortable reading.

“When you open a can of worms you find a lot of worms,” Cookson said at the world track cycling championships in Paris this week. “I think it’s going to be very interesting - there will be a lot of uncomfortable things there.”

“I think there will be a lot of uncomfortable reading in it and we should all prepare ourselves for that. That was always going to be part of what was going to happen. I don’t think there will be a lot of new revelations, because mostly we have a good idea of what was happening and how widespread the problems were. I don’t think there’s any other sport has opened itself up to this level of scrutiny. It’s something I committed to and I’m proud we’ve done, it will be uncomfortable but it will be a good lesson that other sports can learn from as well.”

The report is going to be released in the next three weeks at the latest, and Cookson says that there should be no anonymous names, that all who contributed should be named in the report.

“Unless there are legal reasons why names can’t be named, they will be named,” added Cookson. “We can draw conclusions from lack of contributions as much as positive contributions. There may have to be some redactions, equally we may be in a position to take action against people named by more than one source as having done something against the regulations.”

One of the main aims of the report is to decide who should be allowed to work in cycling, concerning ex dopes who now run teams or are DSs, managers, agents or soigneurs.

“If you look, many teams employ riders or directeurs sportifs who have had association [with dopers] or a direct [doping] sanction. I do have sympathy for those who say, ‘I’ve done my time, I should have a degree of redemption.’ What’s different is the degree of plausibiilty of those apologies and genuine feelings of contrition. What I’d like to get out of the CIRC is more guidance about a fit and proper person test [and] if we need to add conditions in the licencing process.”