If Graham Taylor thought that being manager of the England football team was an impossible job, maybe he should spare a thought for Pat McQuaid, President of the UCI (International Cycling Union), battling to clean up a sport mired in corruption.

The labyrinthine debate over the continuing presence in this year’s Tour de France of Michael Rasmussen, the Danish super-climber who has missed four doping controls since March last year and appears likely to win the race, has undermined all the good work that McQuaid has put in over the past year.

In July 2006, McQuaid, shocked by the revelations of the Operacion Puerto doping affair, became a tough-talking anti-doping evangelist, talking of “root and branch” change to professional cycling’s shadowy culture. But it wasn’t long before reality hit home — and hard.

The Irishman, a former professional and race organizer in Ireland and elsewhere, can hardly have expected to inherit such a poisoned portfolio from previous incumbent Hein Verbruggen, now a major figure within the IOC (International Olympic Committee) in the build-up to next year’s Beijing Olympics.

However, Verbruggen’s inability to tackle the root causes of cycling’s doping culture has come home to roost and McQuaid, elected to the presidency in the autumn of 2005, has been left to pick up the pieces.

“It’s been stressful,” McQuaid acknowledged earlier this summer. “There are some pleasant moments as well, but it’s not been easy.” He refutes the suggestion that Verbruggen passed him a poisoned chalice. “Nobody could have predicted Puerto, not even Verbruggen.”

To give him his credit, McQuaid has not ducked the issues. He has grown increasingly critical of some leading riders. Ivan Basso, for one, who admitted planning a doping campaign under the jurisdiction of Spanish sports doctor Eufemiano Fuentes, will not be getting a Christmas card from the UCI President.

“Basso spent nine months telling lies and then lying to a new team,” McQuaid said from Sardinia on the eve of this year’s Giro d’Italia. “Then, back to the wall and faced with irrefutable evidence, he gets a crisis of conscience. That’s not cooperation. Do I believe that he won the 2006 Giro clean? Well, why were Fuentes and his people so interested in Basso during the Giro last year? And what about all the money he paid Fuentes?”

McQuaid’s reward for his plain-speaking? A shower of phlegm from one leading Italian rider as he stood on the finish line of the team time trial at the Giro.

Now, with the Rasmussen Affair dominating despatches from the Tour, McQuaid has been in the firing line again. On Saturday, his running feud with the Tour’s parent company, ASO, erupted once more when Tour director Christian Prudhomme said: “It's increasingly difficult for me to have confidence in the UCI leadership."

Prudhomme, angered by Rasmussen’s continuing presence in the race despite having missed four anti-doping controls, criticized the UCI for failing to exert a stronger influence on Rasmussen and his team when they warned him about his conduct prior to the Tour start on July 7.

According to McQuaid, the UCI knew about the case and had written to Rasmussen to warn him over his conduct and also to Rabobank asking them to withdraw the rider before the Tour. "If the UCI really did, then it's good, but if they asked and they did not succeed, it's serious," Prudhomme said.

McQuaid, speaking to The Times yesterday, described recent statements by ASO as “unbelievable” and “scandalous". “In late June," he said. "We wrote to Rasmussen and told him that he was on his last chance. His team Rabobank received a letter reiterating those concerns.”

“But no rules have been broken and he can ride the race,” McQuaid said. “All we could do was ask the team to exclude him. The guy has a right to race and his team has a right to put him in the race.”

Rasmussen has admitted that an administrative error led to missing a test but said that he felt relaxed about the situation as he gave negative samples out of competition and has "full support from ASO".

McDaid, however, described the impasse over Rasmussen’s presence on the Tour as “not good” and admitted that, if the Dane won the Tour, "there will be question marks over the credibility of his victory".

However, Erik Breukink, a senior team manager with Rasmussen’s sponsor, Rabobank, this evening denied that the team had ever received any communications regarding Rasmussen from the UCI.

“We never heard anything from anybody at the UCI,” Breukink said. “If they wanted to, they should have suspended him. They shouldn’t put responsibility on the teams. ASO points the finger at the UCI and the UCI points back at us. We’re still waiting for a dictator who can take control of the sport.”

McQuaid, currently on holiday in Ireland, will resume his battle to clean up cycling’s act in the aftermath of another troubled Tour. “I never said that change would happen overnight,” he said. “There’s a lot more talking going on than there was. Riders want to progress and make their views known and there are intelligent riders out there who want to talk openly."