MANCHESTER, England (AP) With 10 days to go until the UCI presidential election, British challenger Brian Cookson believes he has easily secured enough backing to oust incumbent Pat McQuaid.
Cookson, who is the president of British Cycling, needs to secure a simple majority of 22 votes from the 42 voting members of the UCI congress to become world cycling's most powerful figure.
Cookson says he is "confident that I will get a vote that is at least in the high 20s," when delegates vote in Florence, Italy, on Sept. 27.
Two months of fierce campaigning seems to be paying off for Cookson, who has pledged to rebuild cycling's image and governance after the Lance Armstrong doping affair that has stained McQuaid's two-term tenure.
Armstrong's revelation in January that he doped for most of his stellar career, in which he won the Tour de France a record seven times, further rocked a sport already in desperate need of credibility.
