Home » Top Stories » Road »

UCI bars teams, international commissaires from Paris-Nice

Published: Feb. 23, 2007

The UCI fired back at rebel race organizers Friday and officially banned ProTour and second-tier continental teams from starting next month’s Paris-Nice race in France.

The stern ruling threatens to throw the cycling into turmoil at the start of the 2007 season and marks a definitive split between cycling’s governing body and Amaury Sports Organization, the powerful media conglomerate that also owns such events as the Tour de France and Paris-Roubaix.

In a tersely written statement issued Friday afternoon, cycling’s governing body said “teams holding a UCI ProTour license and UCI professional continental teams will not be allowed to take part in this race. The rules in fact stipulate these two types of teams cannot participate in a national race.”

The UCI also said international anti-doping controls will not be able to test riders and that UCI commissaires would not officiate Paris-Nice, adding that “he/she cannot therefore support a race where the organizer is blatantly violating the international cycling rules.”

“The UCI is sorry that teams and riders have been taken hostage by an organizer wanting to flout the rules that all parties in cycling are obliged to respect,” the statement concluded.

The rhetoric has been heating up all week after a last-chance sit-down between UCI president Pat McQuaid and ASO president Patrice Clerc ended in debacle Monday.

ASO quickly yanked the Race to the Sun (March 11-18) out of the 27-race ProTour series and said it will organize Europe’s first major stage race under the control of the French cycling federation as a so-called national race.

Some observers see the ASO move as a first salvo in what could be a complete separation from the UCI and the creation of a rival racing league. Organizers of both the Giro d’Italia and the Vuelta a España have allied themselves with ASO over differences with the UCI in the ProTour format.

Teams and riders have expressed dismay at the widening gulf and inflexible postures taken by both the UCI and ASO.

Before the UCI issued its outright ban on Friday, several ProTour teams said they would race Paris-Nice one way or another.

“[We will race for] our sponsors and above all our riders, who are there to ride and certainly not to be held hostage over a conflict between international federations and organizers,” Cofidis manager Eric Boyer told AFP.

ProTour teams’ president Patrick Lefevere has called for an emergency meeting next Friday of all the major team bosses to try to resolve the crisis.

For the complete UCI statement in Microsoft Word format, click here. — Editor.