The civil war that was threatening to destroy cycling may not happen. The UCI and ASO, Unipublic and RCS (organizers of the Grand Tours) have called a ceasefire in their struggle for power and control of their events and cyclign in general. This is good news only one week before the first ProTour race of the year Paris-Nice was supposed to start. Paris-Nice was under threat of having no ProTour teams present. The event was at risk of being run as a Continental or worse and amateur event.
Finally cooler heads are prevailing allowing for the ProTour to continue with all of the 20 teams including Unibet.com and Astana.
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The Tour of California bike race is in its second year and growing. Latest word is that the organizers want to grow the race to become a major Grand Tour. Of course with a successful bike race following the same format for two years in a row, the organizers have nothing to do but dream of ways to make the race grow. In the past thoughts of growing the race to step on the toes of the major Grand Tours would be met with scoffs, laughing or at least a “we can dream can’t we” type of response. Not this year though as cycling as a sport is at a major crossroads where everything is up in the air for its future.
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The Giro D’Italia will feature only 18 of the 20 ProTour Teams and will make the final announcement on February 12. This is a move that signals a large fissure in the battle between the UCI’s and the three Grand Tours. This situation was not helped much when Pat McQuaid made some very odd comments about Continental European culture.
The rift between grand tour organizers and the ProTour should help Tinkoff’s chances in the Giro. Zomegnan noted his differences with UCI president Pat McQuaid and said the two were definitely not talking after recent “Mafia” comments by the Irishman. “You could really see his soul with those remarks.”
– cyclingnews.com
This split with the UCI by not including all of the ProTour teams is a natural adjustment for the Giro D’Italia which as had its little brother status to the Tour exacerbated by the ProTour.
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The Holiday cheer is missing in the cycling world. The Grinch has stolen all of the good cheer from anyone related to pro cycling. Sure Discovery Channel, CSC and Tinkoff among many others have already met for their first training camps for the 2007 season. Discovery Channel played paint ball in Texas while CSC was training to go to fight in Iraq in South Africa. Lampre can be happy that they locked up the services of Il Princippe (Damiano Cunego) until 2009.
A cold wind started blowing way back in the spring time when Spanish Guardia Civil started leaking info on a new investigation that was to bust open the world of doping in cycling. 200 or 59 or 8 cyclist in all were implicated in the press. Now we approach the end of 2006 and no one rider is implicated and pretty much anyone whose name has been associated with Operation Puerto has been cleared.
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Not surprising news, but the organizers of the Vuelta, Tour and Giro are not going to include the races in next year’s ProTour. The UCI and Grand Tour organizers have been at odds since the formation of the ProTour which was to integrate all major cycling races into a year long points competition. The GT organizers especially the ASO who organizes the Tour de France don’t want to relinquish control over sponsorships and television revenues which the UCI wants to control as an overall package. This saga is not yet over as I would expect the UCI to counter somehow.
The three major Tours leave UCI Pro-Tour – Cycling – Yahoo! Sports
Team support cars are what separates the big teams from the not so big teams. You know you made it when you are on a team with a huge bus. While other teams simply get by with a few brightly colored cars.
If you every wonders what Jelly-Belly’s team car looks like or what does the Euskatel-Euskadi’s Bus looks like, wonder no more, CyclingCars.com documents all of the team cars that they can snap a picture of in the Pro Peloton.
Acceuil gallery photo
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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