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McQuaid: 'Grand tours returning to Dark Ages'
UCI president Pat McQuaid told VeloNews Friday that he was "not surprised" by the position taken by the organizers of the three grand tours, saying their decision to split from the UCI ProTour and return to a system of team invitations and wild cards for their events was "like going back to the Dark Ages." He believes that the grand tours made a pre-emptive move in view of a meeting planned this coming Monday between the UCI and the ProTour team sponsors.
Speaking on a cell phone while transferring planes at the airport in Frankfurt, Germany, McQuaid said he had just heard of the grand tours’ statements after a four-hour flight from Cairo, Egypt, where he attended the African Championships. "When I turned on my phone, there were something like 10 messages waiting for me," he said.
McQuaid reiterated some of the points made in a statement that his organization had just issued, including: "Being the only player in this [ProTour] reform with no economic position to defend or promote, the UCI could never share such an obsolete and dangerous vision for the development of cycling."
The UCI president went on to say "the UCI’s role in all this is to be the arbitrator" between the teams and sponsors on the one hand and the race organizers on the other. McQuaid saw the grand tours’ proposal to reward every team that rides the Giro d’Italia, Tour de France and Vuelta a España with a 100,000-euro bonus, and to create a trophy competition around the three tours with a 600,000-euro first prize, as a ploy to "buy the teams."
McQuaid also made the point that only the UCI has the authority "to establish and modify regulations affecting the sport of cycling," and that a trophy competition like that suggested by the three grand tours was not permissible under UCI article 1.2.026, which states that "any classification based on the events of the international calendar must be expressly authorized by the UCI."
Earlier Friday, at the grand tours’ press conference held in Paris, Tour chairman and managing director Patrice Clerc said, "I find it hard to imagine that the UCI could oppose a trophy that recompenses and adds to the resources of a team."
"They could have been more inventive and creative," McQuaid opined, "perhaps come up with a plan that could have been finalized by the end of June, just before the Tour."
The proposed moves made by the grand tours were brought on, according to Clerc, by an "ultimatum" to them by the UCI ProTour Council two weeks ago. But McQuaid said there was no ultimatum and that the members of the council, under the chairmanship of former world champion and Giro winner Vittorio Adorni, were simply frustrated by Clerc’s intransigence and trying to get some movement in the ProTour discussions.
As McQuaid, who has been the UCI president for less than three months, headed to the plane taking him home to Switzerland, he agreed that has had a demanding introduction to the position.
"It’s a good job I have a broad back," said the 56-year-old Irishman.
