Cycling is a sport with a history of corruption... so perhaps this isn't terribly surprising.
snip
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Cast your mind back to June. Before the racing season resumed. Before the Tour and Worlds and most of the Classics, when the world was still trying to wrap its head around this pandemic thing.
In that lull, when everyone was otherwise preoccupied and not really thinking about cycling, the UCI awarded a dictator its highest honour, which was all very cool and very normal, especially seeing as it was kept under wraps until CyclingTips broke the story.
To this date, the UCI has made no mention of it anywhere on its website.
Five months later, the dictator in question – the Great Protector himself, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov, president of Turkmenistan – is back in the news. And that, dear reader, is something that very much has my attention, because the guy is profoundly interesting.
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a tip of the hat to James