UCI president Brian Cookson has queried the thinking behind Tour de France organiser ASO’s decision to withdraw its races from the WorldTour in 2017, pointing out that UCI rules stipulate a maximum distance of 200 kilometres for non-WorldTour races.
ASO announced on Friday that it would register its events, including the Tour, Vuelta a España, Paris-Roubaix and Liège-Bastogne-Liège, as HC races in 2017 in protest at the UCI’s proposed reforms of the WorldTour system.
The move would allow ASO greater control over which teams are invited to its events, but in an interview with the Guardian on Wednesday, Cookson highlighted a drawback to the ASO plan.
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“I don’t think their move is a helpful one and I wonder if they’ve thought it through properly,” Cookson told the Guardian. “Have they looked at all the rules? The maximum distance for HC events is 200km, so are they going to shorten Paris-Roubaix or the longer Tour stages? They can’t pick and choose which rules apply to them if they want to be part of the sport.”
ASO and the UCI have been at loggerheads over the WorldTour system at various points since its inception in 2005, most notably during the 2008 season, when the Tour de France and Paris-Nice were organised under the aegis of the French Federation rather than the UCI.
Cookson pledged to forge a better working relationship with ASO and other stakeholders when he succeeded Pat McQuaid as president in September 2013, and he said that the lines of communication would remain open in a bid to end the impasse.
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