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Tuesday's EuroFile: Riis calls for unity; Murcia may fold
Former Tour de France winner Bjarne Riis has pleaded for cycling to get its house in order, or face losing further credibility in the eyes of an increasingly suspect public.
The CSC team manager led his Danish-based team to the top of the ProTour rankings last year, despite losing his star rider, Ivan Basso, following the release of allegations from a doping investigation in Spain.
Basso, last year's Giro d’Italia winner, was released by CSC.
After Italian sporting authorities cleared the Italian ace, who was tipped as Lance Armstrong's successor, he has since moved to Discovery Channel.
It is not just doping and the surrounding allegations, however, which currently threaten the stability of the sport, said Riis.
Current differences between the UCI and the organizers of the sport’s three grand tours – the Giro d’Italia, the Tour de France and the Vuelta a España - over the structure of the ProTour threaten to split cycling in two.
And Riis, who has brought a motivated outfit to Australia’s Tour Down Under in the hope that Stuart O'Grady can score a hat-trick of overall victories, says it is time for the warring parties to down their weapons.
"From the outside looking in, it looks as though all cycling has is problems," said Riis, who brought an end to the five-year reign of Spanish legend Miguel Indurain when he won the yellow jersey in 1996.
"We have to stand together -- teams, riders, the UCI and the race organizers," he said. "I think the ProTour is good, but there might be a few things we have to change."
The ProTour was introduced, some claim in rather hasty fashion, by former UCI president Hein Verbruggen two years ago.
Since then, his Irish successor, Pat McQuaid, has been fighting to promote a series which, although welcomed by most teams, has been given short shrift by the elder statesmen of race organizers.
Combined, ASO, which runs the Tour de France, RCS (Giro), and Unipublic (Vuelta) organize 11 of the ProTour's 27 races. They recently declared they were no longer part of the UCI ProTour.
The UCI responded by taking the dispute to the European Commission.
ASO then upped the ante by announcing they would not be inviting ProTour newcomers, Unibet, to their Paris-Nice race - the first major stage race of the season - in March.
Doping allegations were the bane of most of last year, when a Spanish doping probe dubbed Operacion Puerto implicated 58 riders, only for most of them to be cleared to race again.
American Floyd Landis then tested positive for an elevated testosterone/epitestosterone level during the Tour de France. Having proclaimed his innocence, he is awaiting a ruling from the U.S. Anti-doping Agency on a possible ban.
New anti-doping and deterrent measures have since been proposed by the UCI, and by concerned teams, including the use of DNA profiling.
Riis has announced his own anti-doping measures for the years ahead, but he said DNA profiling was not the magic solution.
"For me, DNA is not the most important thing. It is more important for each team to spend time examining their internal structures and the characters of riders to fight doping."
Agence France Presse
Vuelta a Murcia in doubt?
Spanish newspapers report that the 2007 edition of the Vuelta a Murcia is in doubt because of outstanding bills.
The news comes on the heels of organizers' failure to secure a television deal with public-service broadcaster TVE. The race has suffered financially since it was not included in the UCI's top-tier ProTour series. Nonetheless, the 2006 attracted several of the world's top ProTour teams, including Discovery Channel, Caisse d'Epargné-Illes Balears, Saunier Duval-Prodir or Lampre-Fondital.
The failure to agree a TV deal to date has left a €120,000 deficit in the event's budget, preventing the organizers from investing in the infrastructure required for the 27th edition of the race.
