The anticipated first meeting between UCI President Brian Cookson and Tour de France race director Christian Prudhomme since Amaury Sport Organisation's (ASO) decision to withdraw its events from the WorldTour calendar from 2017 will have to wait a little longer, with the latter's trip to Australia cancelled. ASO organises the Tour de France, Paris-Nice, Paris-Roubaix and Liege-Bastogne-Liege, the Vuelta a Espana and several other big races on the calendar.
In a press conference with the media on the morning of the Tour Down Under's queen stage, Cookson touched upon several topics regarding the UCI's WorldTour reforms. Cookson spoke of negotiating with ASO, expanding the WorldTour calendar and team license applications among several other topics.
Negotiations with ASO
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I am reluctant to say too much because I don’t want to negotiate through the media. I think it was a surprise and a disappointment that after two year of talking, of consensus building, partnership building, of compromise in many directions all the different diverse stakeholders in our sport, one major player decided they didn’t want to be part of it, that’s all a bit disappointing. I am not sure how much movement potential there is in any of the directions they are unhappy about. I don’t think it's unreasonable, the set of proposals. The teams haven’t got everything they wanted but when I sit down with the other organisers and they tell me that again they are generally quite happy with the way forward, clearly the ASO feel their interested are threatened. I don’t want to threaten those interests.
There is no proposal to change any of the criteria, any of the rights, no one is trying to take their rights away from them, no one is proposing to share their profits or anything like that but we have to grow this cake and use the same analogy that I’ve been using for the past two years that pro cycling is a pretty small cake. ASO have the majotiry of the slices and we got to find a way to make that cake bigger so everyone gets a slice and do that without taking any of the cake away from ASO … they I think could grow and develop and benefit from a more global approach, the most sustainable economy for professional cycling. In one sense they are already doing that with their events like the Arctic Race of Norway, the Tour de Yorkshire and so on. I think we can work together. I think we can collaborate effectively to everyone’s benefit but this, ‘I am taking my football home with me because I don’t like the way you’re playing the game’ is not helpful to anybody.
I think there are a lot of good people in the ASO who want to work with the UCI, want to work with other organisers, want to work with teams and I am sure, with goodwill, that we can find a solution that works for everybody.
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