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Inside Cycling: Will pro cycling split into two leagues?
ASO’s insurrection could lead to a major split in pro cycling
While High Road Sports boss Bob Stapleton was excited earlier this week to announce that Columbia Sportswear has signed on as the new title sponsor of his UCI ProTour team, the California team manager also expressed concern over the political environment in which the top international teams are competing.
“The power struggles within the sport are reaching a zenith right now,” Stapleton said on a conference call. “I originally thought that you would see a new structure emerge even as early as this summer.
I think this is very much an open issue right now. The question is, Will there be two leagues that are formed? One would be the ProTour, and [the other one] something new that encompasses events of ASO and others. I can see two rival circuits for some period of time…. I’m not excited about that, but that could be the outcome.”
Similar fears have been expressed by UCI president Pat McQuaid, who believes that ASO — which is organizing next month’s Tour de France outside the framework of the sport’s governing body with help from the French cycling federation [FFC] — is attempting to establish a breakaway organization. ASO president Patrice Clerc denies that is his company’s intention; he says that he just can’t agree with what he calls the “closed shop” aspect of the UCI ProTour and wants more flexibility on which teams start the Tour and other ASO events.
Stapleton concurs with McQuaid. “There are some clear signs of [ASO’s] events gaining tremendous strength,” he said, citing this week’s marketing agreement between ASO and Amgen Tour of California owner AEG, and last week’s acquisition by ASO of a 49-percent stake in Vuelta a España organizer Unipublic.
“You are seeing a consolidation … and the potential of having a kind of AFL versus NFL situation for a year or so in cycling.”
Stapleton was remembering the massive power struggle in American football that pitched the venerable National Football League (founded in 1920) against the upstart American Football League through the 1960s. Texas oligarch Lamar Hunt established the AFL in 1960 after the NFL rebuffed him in his attempts to buy his way into team ownership. The result was rival leagues and a huge bidding war for the best prospects in college football, which finally ended after the NFL agreed to a merger in 1966 — and resulted in the organization of the first Super Bowl in 1967.
The situation in cycling is more complicated because the current teams would have to compete in both leagues. When asked by VeloNews if this would be a problem, Stapleton said, “Much of this is negative for the sport. For example, which rules apply? What about the procedures for anti-doping? What about all the structure that you’ve taken for granted in the sport? That’s a little uncertain for the races that are going to be run under the French association. So it’s a big headache for the teams.”
Stapleton, who doesn’t have a cycling background and has been a team manager for only two years, is not taking sides in the UCI versus ASO power struggle. “I’m a centrist in this,” he said. “The best thing I can do in the sport right now is try and bring diverse parties together and focus on key issues, and try and solve them. We have a great relationship with all the parties … and I personally will try and use that towards sensible solutions. It’s the biggest benefit I have in being an outsider. So we’re trying to be a peacemaker, and focus on baby steps to progress. There’s varying receptions to that approach.”
UCI PROTOUR
In place since 2005, the UCI ProTour is much more than a series of races. It is a professionally operated league that has brought benefits to both teams and events.
The 18 teams licensed at this elite level have to honor several demanding requirements: a roster of between 25 and 30 riders; an appropriate staff of qualified team directors, mechanics and soigneurs; an ethical charter that calls on them to immediately suspend any rider involved in a doping case; and stringent financial controls that involve depositing a significant percentage of their annual budget with a firm of independent auditors.
The teams are obliged to compete in every UCI ProTour race — a fact that displeases ASO but has greatly raised both the financial and sporting levels of many events. Typical of the benefits afforded by the ProTour is the French stage race, the Dauphiné Libéré. Prior to the ProTour’s establishment, the Dauphiné had no live television coverage (just taped highlights on a regional station) and was contested by only 11 Division 1 teams.
Today, thanks to the ProTour, the Dauphiné has live coverage throughout Europe for every stage, and the race is contested by all 18 ProTour squads.
“We have come from nothing to everything,” said race director Thierry Cazeneuve. “From now on, we are guaranteed having the best teams and the best riders.”
This has also been a commercial windfall for the Dauphiné, which has seen its live TV audience grow from zero in 2004, to 35 million in 2005, to 59 million in 2007, and a possible expansion to 100 million should countries like China and Japan sign up for coverage in the near future. Only four years ago, the French race was hanging by a thread financially because its owner and main sponsor, the Dauphiné Libéré, like most newspapers, is still adjusting to drastic losses in revenue caused by the Internet.
While most top teams recognize the benefits of belonging to the ProTour, they find themselves in a political tug-of-war, not only in regard to the ongoing battle between ASO and the UCI but also because of the seemingly contradictory goals of the various team organizations: the 25-member AIGCP (Association International des Groupes Cyclistes Professionels), 17-member IPCT (International Pro Cycling Teams), and 12-member MPCC (Mouvement Pour un Cyclisme Crédible).
The AIGCP, the body that once represented all major pro teams (Division 1 and 2 prior to 2005), has lost much of its strength recently with the withdrawal from its ranks of several ProTour squads, including Astana, Caisse d’Épargne, Liquigas, Milram, Quick Step and Saunier Duval-Scott. Increasingly, the association is seen as too closely allied with the French federation and ASO, which have a strong relationship with the AIGCP president Eric Boyer, the French team manager of Cofidis.
The Belgian manager of Quick Step, Patrick Lefevere, quit his post as AIGCP president because he was fed up with the infighting between ASO and the UCI. He now chairs the IPCT, which represents the commercial interests of all the ProTour teams (except for one non-member, Française des Jeux).
As for the MPCC, this is “the conscience” of the AIGCP, being an association fighting for dope-free cycling; it was started last July by the six major French teams, which have been joined the top two U.S. squads, Columbia and Garmin-Chipotle, Gerolsteiner of Germany, Rabobank and Skil-Shimano of the Netherlands, and Volksbank of Austria. Membership of this group gives teams credibility regarding their commitment to drug-free racing, and only this week that helped Volksbank, a Pro Continental squad, obtain a wild-card slot for August’s Deutschland Tour.
ASO EVENTS
Since its founding in 1900, the Union Cycliste Internationale has controlled the sport of cycling worldwide and represented its 170 national federations, all of which have agreed that “the constitution and regulations of the UCI shall be respected in full by all affiliated international and national federations.”
This agreement is at the crux of the UCI’s decision on June 12 to suspend the FFC until December 31, 2008 for “lack of loyalty to the UCI and for having breached UCI statutes and regulations by actively and openly supporting the organization of the 2008 Paris-Nice outside the UCI framework.”
Despite what was written in the French media, UCI president McQuaid did not participate in the decision to suspend the FFC, which was made by the other members of the UCI management committee. Following the decision, the FFC issued a press release, denouncing “a new escalation in the intimidation and menace to silence all those who don’t approve unconditionally the organization of cycling desired by the UCI.” It added that “this sanction changes absolutely nothing in the grave crises that international cycling is going through.”
FFC president Jean Pitallier said, “I condemn this anti-democratic decision…. This won’t make me give up the fight. It’s necessary to look again at the ProTour. I ask once more for a round table to be held.”
The French ministry of sport, which is enabling the 2008 Tour de France to take place under its national Code of Sport, also issued a press release, restating its “total support” for the FFC, which the ministry said should “not be penalized for applying French law.” It opined that the sanction “will not resolve the current crisis in international cycling.”
The next day, the UCI management committee rebutted “the lies published by the FFC in its press release,” and added, “All the stakeholders in the cycling family may express themselves, but that does not give them the right to break the UCI rules.” The management committee added that the FFC sanction could be compounded if the federation “continues to flout the UCI statutes and rules, in particular by supporting ASO in its organization of the upcoming Tour de France outside the UCI framework.”
Commenting on the current situation, Stapleton said, “I’m not excited about this power struggle … but I think ultimately, probably by next year, you’ll see a restructuring of the sport that gives sponsors more certainty on what they’re investing in…. My hope is that this gets done in an intelligent way so that there’s a better marketing product, better television broadcasts, and more excitement in the sport in general.
“For many of the teams right now, we’re trying to sort through what does it really mean to be in the ProTour? What are the cost benefits? And more than anything what restrictions apply? This is very actively being debated across the teams … and all fronts for both ASO and the UCI.”
TWO LEAGUES?
Should the ongoing power struggle not be resolved this year then the elite international calendar might well be split into two opposing leagues. Based on the current situation and a little bit of guess work, here is what the two leagues could look like in 2009:
Possible UCI ProTour (11 stage races, 8 classics)JANUARY: Tour Down Under (Aus)
APRIL: Tour of Flanders (B), Ghent-Wevelgem (B), Tour of the Basque Country (Sp), Schelde GP (B), Amstel Gold Race (Nl)MAY: Tour de Romandie (Swi), Sochi Stage Race (Rus), Tour of Catalonia (Sp)
JUNE: Dauphiné Libéré (F), Tour of Switzerland (Swi)
JULY: Tour of Austria (A)
AUGUST: Clásica San Sebastian (Sp), Tour of Poland (Pl), Plouay GP (F), Benelux Tour (B-Nl)
SEPTEMBER: Paris-Brussels (B), Tour of China (Chn)
OCTOBER: Grand Finale (?)
Possible ASO league (8 stage races, 8 classics)
(* indicates ASO owned or ASO affiliate’s event)
FEBRUARY: Tour of California (USA)
MARCH: *Paris-Nice (F), Monte Paschi Eroica (I), Tirreno-Adriatico (I), Milan-San Remo (I), *Critérium International (F)
APRIL: *Paris-Roubaix (F), *Flèche Wallonne (B), *Liège-Bastogne-Liège (B)
MAY-JUNE: Giro d’Italia (I)
JULY: *Tour de France (F)
AUGUST: *Deutschland Tour (G), *Vattenfall Cyclassics (G)
SEPTEMBER: *Vuelta a España (Sp)
OCTOBER: *Paris-Tours (F), Tour of Lombardy (I)
These two separate leagues would not create a situation exactly like the six-year war between the NFL and AFL of the 1960s — though the UCI versus ASO battle is already into its fourth year. The good news is that the eventual NFL-AFL merger resulted in the establishment of what is arguably America’s largest annual sports event, the Super Bowl. Maybe the coming (back) together of the UCI and ASO would be an even stronger Tour de France, and a worldwide league of races with similar clout, all contested by the world’s top teams.
