Former UCI president Pat McQuaid has agreed with CPA president Gianni Bugno's assertions that reducing teams for the Grand Tours from nine to eight riders in 2018 will not make racing safer. When asked about the move by the UCI to reduce team sizes, McQuaid called it a "backwards step for the sport", and suggested that Tour de France owners ASO championed the reduction in order to "weaken the teams".
"Always in ASO's mind, this has always been the case, they've tried to keep the teams weak," McQuaid said. "They're afraid of the teams getting strong. They fear that sometime the teams will bind together and go for them. That's their greatest fear. Every little opportunity ASO can get to weaken the teams, they'll take it."
During McQuaid's first term as president of the UCI, he locked horns with the ASO over the then-ProTour's attempts to reform professional cycling. The battle came to a head in 2008 when the ASO put its foot down and refused to be a part of the series, even holding Paris-Nice and the Tour de France under the French federation, outside the aegis of the UCI, in part because the ASO objected to the UCI's rules requiring them to invite every ProTour team.
ADVERTISEMENT
At the end of the 2008 season, McQuaid sat down with then-IOC president Jacques Rogge and the ASO owners to hammer out a peace deal that rescued the series, later reborn as the WorldTour.
In McQuaid's view, the ASO is still attempting to influence the sport's governance to protect its interests, and was the impetus behind reducing team sizes. Indeed, last year the Grand Tour organisers attempted to change their rules to reduce teams to eight riders until the UCI stepped in and informed them that it was not their place to set team sizes. The race organisers backed down, fielding full nine-rider teams this season, but in September – two days before David Lappartient won the election – the UCI approved the rules for the reduction despite the objection from the CPA.
The UCI began an experiment in the reduction of team sizes in 2013, doing trials at the Eneco Tour and Tour de Pologne and other events over the past four seasons before introducing the new rule. It is unclear that any there is any empirical data that suggests racing is safer with fewer riders, which is one of the reasons given for the new rules on team sizes.
You can read more at Cyclingnews.com
via Cyclingnews Latest News http://ift.tt/2meBCz1
No comments:
Post a Comment