The 63-year-old Briton, who met with the International Olympic Committee's President Thomas Bach in June to discuss the reforms he is overseeing within the UCI and also the shape of future Games within Bach's proposed Olympic Agenda 2020, told insidethegames: "Our main intention as far as future Olympics go is to make sure we defend cycling's position with the programme.

"We have had huge successes at the last two Summer Olympics in terms of showing what the sport is all about, not just on the track but on the road, and in the BMX and mountain biking.

"We have shown what we can do.

"The job now is to replicate all that in Rio 2016, Tokyo 2020 and beyond.

"Going forward, we want to defend what we have already got at the Olympics, and to see if we can adapt or expand cycling events on the programme, perhaps bringing in new disciplines such as downhill mountain biking and cyclo-cross."

Cyclo-cross underway last year in the British Championships, a discipline UCI President Brian Cookson wants included in the Olympic Games ©Getty Images

Cookson added: "After Athens 2004 we lost some track events as part of getting BMX on the Olympic Programme for Beijing 2008.

"After Beijing we lost some more track events, this time in order to have gender equality at the London 2012 Olympics.

"Of course we approve of the idea of gender equality - but we would rather have had more women's events rather than less men's events in order to accommodate the balance.

"So this is one of the main issues we have to keep working at.

"We certainly don't want to go backwards.

"If we are successful in introducing new events, we don't want to lose any more to make up for them."

Asked if he was not working against the tide here given the pressure which is now on the Olympics not to grow too big, Cookson responded: "Who knows?

"Anything is possible.

"But that is why this year as a reaction I suggested, slightly tongue-in-cheek, that we could alter the balance between the Summer and Winter Olympic Games in terms of some events.

"It didn't go down well with some people..."

One of those people was the International Judo Federation President Marius Vizer, who clearly did not appreciate the suggestion that his sport could become a Winter rather than Summer Olympic sport.

Cookson concluded: "I think President Bach was very pleased with the advances we had made in our anti-doping processes within the UCI, particularly in making them independent of the UCI.

"He also said we had taken a very radical step in appointing the Independent Commission.

"He was very pleased with that, and was good enough to say so publicly - for which I thank him."

UCI President Brian Cookson intervened in the recent controversy over the apparently revealing costumes worn by the Colombian women's team following a plea from Britain's Olympic gold medallist Nicole Cooke ©Twitter

In a full interview in the Big Read which you can find here, Cookson added that he had stepped into the controversy over the kit worn by the Colombian women's cycling team DRD-Bogota Humana-San Mateo-Solgar at the request of several women from within the sport, including the Beijing 2008 road race champion Nicole Cooke. 

The Colombian kit creates the impression that the riders are wearing nothing between their midriff and their upper thighs, and pictures of a team line-up have trended on Twitter in the past week, provoking considerable adverse reaction.

"I think this is a case history of social media,"  said the former President of British Cycling.

"It is a small thing at first, and then it suddenly starts to go bananas.

"I think it's possibly true to say that there has been a massive over-reaction all round.

"But Nicole was one of the people who asked me to step in, and as a result, I have asked the national federation to look at this case.

"It's really a matter for the Colombian Federation, not the UCI."

Contact the writer of this story at [email protected]


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