Velochimp: Astrochimp on Cycling

The ProTour is under pressure with the precarious relationship with the Organizers of the Grand Tours. RCS, the organizers of the Giro have decided to keep the split-stage format citing the fact that the Giro (along with the Tour de France and Vuelta Espana) will not be part of the ProTour, and so will not be bound by the rulings of the ProTour or the UCI. News today of the inclusion of AG2R as the 20th team to get a Four-Year as a top 20 squad can only degrade the standing of the Pro Tour as a serious top shelf cycling league.

AG2R made it to the top 20 not by performance, but by some serious sponsor money. The sponsor money was not enough to actually get top-shelf talent as they only signed Christophe Moreau and Francisco Mancebo. These are quality riders that mostly chase Tour de France and Vuelta Espana glory. These are two of three events that will NOT be included in the ProTour as it stands today. So where does that leave AG2R? Lots of money but not a huge amount of talent to support their entry to many of the top races on the calendar.

The inclusion of AG2R adds an unnatural balance to the nationality of teams in the ProTour. True, teams today offer a large mix of nationalities. CSC is not so much a Danish team as their Director Sportif. Discovery is not so American as it used to be. AG2R now will be the Fifth(!) French team to be included as a Top 20 ProTour Team. This is compared to Four Spanish Teams, one of which is slowly turning French (Illes Baleares going to Caisse D’Eparne) and Three Italian Teams. This is a drastic comparison to the performance standings that show Italy, Spain and the USA as the top nations getting results.
As mentioned before on Velochimp, the best option is to cut down the number of Teams in the ProTour to 16 or 18 and include wild-card teams that have more of a local interest. This would help to animate the races by including more competition that is not simply riding along or forced to perform.

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