| Current season or competition: 2009 UCI ProTour |
|
 UCI ProTour |
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| Sport | Road bicycle racing |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2005 |
| No. of teams | 18 |
| Country(ies) | Europe and Australia |
| Most recent champion(s) | Alberto Contador Caisse d'Epargne Spain |
The UCI ProTour is a series of road bicycle races organised by the International Cycling Union (UCI). Created by Hein Verbruggen, former president of the UCI, it comprises a number of 'ProTour' cycling teams, each of whom are required to compete in every round of the series. It was initially the basis of a season long competition for rankings points, created for 2005 and to replace the UCI Road World Cup series, which ended at the end of the 2004 season (although the World Cup did not include any stage races). The ProTour has been the subject of continuing disputes involving the UCI, cycling teams, and the organizers of the world's most prominent bicycle races (most notably, the Grand Tours), and from 2009 the ranking element of the ProTour has been superseded by the UCI World Ranking.
Contents |
Licensing
The ProTour licences are given to a maximum of 20 teams, to which sponsors must commit multiple years of sponsorship (4 years at the ProTour's inauguration). The exception to this rule was the Phonak team, which was given only a two-year licence due to previous doping allegations.
After 2005, the Fassa Bortolo and Domina Vacanze teams folded and the vacant places were given to AG2R Prévoyance and Team Milram respectively. Following the 2006 season the designated principal sponsor for the Phonak Hearing Systems team, iShares, pulled its support as a results of the Floyd Landis doping scandal and the team was disbanded. The Unibet.com Cycling Team received Phonak's ProTour license, and the Swiss-based, Kazakh-backed Astana Team received the license previously owned by Manolo Saiz and his Liberty Seguros-Würth. Unbet.com and Discovery Channel discontinued after the 2007 season, bringing down the number of ProTour teams to 18. At the end of 2008, another two teams dropped out: Crédit Agricole and Gerolsteiner. Their licenses were taken over by Garmin-Slipstream and Team Katusha. Bbox Bouygues Telecom and Cofidis were denied contract renewals for the 2010 season, whereas the new Team Sky will join the elite group in 2010.
History
Season-long competitions for professional road racing were first instituted in 1948, and continued until the late 1980s when the UCI instituted the UCI Road World Cup series which ran until 2004.
In replacing the World Cup, the ProTour was designed to follow the format of the Formula One motor-racing series, and was intended to address several concerns:
- The Grand Tours were not part of the UCI Road World Cup series
- Different riders and different teams targeted different types of races, making direct comparisons difficult
- Team sponsorships tended to last only a very few years
- Many teams had financial difficulty in paying their riders and staff members
- Several teams had been plagued by doping issues
The UCI lobbied the organizers of the Grand Tours to participate in the ProTour, and was successful in obtaining their agreement despite prior disagreements and threats to completely pull out of the ProTour.
The ProTour has been criticized for not having a system in place for a timely upgrade and downgrade of teams from/to the lower-tier UCI Continental Circuits.
UCI versus Grand Tour organisers
Originally, UCI and the organisers of the Grand Tours had been unable to come to terms on the 2006 UCI ProTour, with the result that the status of both the Grand Tours and some of the other races organised by the organisations behind the Grand Tours are unclear. A deal was finally reached on April 7. See the main article 2006 UCI ProTour for a list of races.
During the 2007 UCI ProTour season, the ASO, RCS and Unipublic, organisers of the Tour de France, Giro d'Italia and Vuelta a Espana respectively, remained at odds with each other. The primary reason is that grand tour organisers would like to have more freedom to invite popular national teams (e.g., UCI Professional Continental teams) and are attempting to exclude some UCI ProTour teams such as Unibet.com. The teams' organisation, the International Professional Cycling Teams (IPCT), has demanded a meeting between the UCI and the Grand Tour organisers to settle the dispute.
From 2008 the ProTour has been largely decapitated by the withdrawal from its calendar of the three Grand Tours, namely the Tour de France, Giro d'Italia and Vuelta a España, as well as the early-season stage race Paris-Nice and key single-day events such as Paris-Roubaix, Milan-Sanremo, Liège-Bastogne-Liège, La Flèche Wallonne and the Giro di Lombardia. This is because of an intensifying dispute between the UCI and Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO), the organiser of major events including Paris-Nice, the Tour de France, Paris-Roubaix, Liège-Bastogne-Liège and La Flèche Wallonne. On 25 February 2008 UCI chairman Pat McQuaid sent all professional teams a letter urging them to boycott Paris-Nice because it was an 'outlawed' race. Reacting to the letter, Quick Step team manager Patrick Lefevere said: "I'm more than fed up with all the arguing. ASO and UCI don't know how much damage they are doing to the sport. What am I supposed to tell my sponsors? This conflict has been going on for three years and is escalating all the time. Can the teams be certain that they will be able to take part in the Tour de France later in the year?"[1]. On 27 February 2008 the AIGCP (Association International des Groupes Cyclistes Professionels) announced that the teams had unanimously decided to take part in Paris-Nice. The 'Race to the Sun' will be held under the rules of the French Cycling Federation, independently of the UCI.[2]
On July 15, 2008, the 17 ProTour teams participating in the 2008 Tour de France announced that none of them would seek ProTour licenses for the 2009 season,[3] but in the end all but two of them re-committed[citation needed].
In 2008 the Tour Down Under in Australia became the first ProTour event to be held outside Europe. This will likely be followed by two one day races in Canada in 2010, and the Tour of California in 2011. [4]. 2010 will also see the postponed first edition of the Tour of Sochi in Russia.[5]
In 2009 UCI and organizers had agreement that events will be counted towards UCI World Ranking, which also includes Professional Continental teams. Grand Tour organizers kept the right to choose teams for the races, and also some of the teams chose not to race certain races.
List of current UCI ProTour teams
List of future UCI ProTour teams
| Code | Official Team Name | License holder | Country | Contract | Website |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SKY | Team Sky | Tour Racing Limited |  United Kingdom |
2013 | |
| ??? | Team RadioShack | Capital Sports and Entertainment |  United States |
2013 | teamradioshack.com |
List of former UCI ProTour teams
| Code | Official Team Name | Country | UCI ProTour Years |
|---|---|---|---|
| C.A | Crédit Agricole |  France |
2005–2008 |
| DSC | Discovery Channel Pro Cycling Team | United States |
2005–2007 |
| FAS | Fassa Bortolo |  Italy |
2005 |
| GST | Gerolsteiner |  Germany |
2005–2008 |
| LST | Liberty Seguros – Würth |  Spain |
2005 |
| PHO | Phonak Hearing Systems |  Switzerland |
2005–2006 |
| UNI | Unibet.com Cycling Team |  Sweden |
2007 |
ProTour Results
| Year | Top Ranked Individual | Top Ranked Team | Top Ranked Nation |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2005 | Danilo Di Luca (ITA) Liquigas–Bianchi |
Team CSC | Italy |
| 2006 | Alejandro Valverde (ESP) Caisse d'Epargne – Illes Balears |
Team CSC | Spain |
| 2007 |  Cadel Evans (AUS)Predictor–Lotto |
Team CSC | Spain |
| 2008 | Alejandro Valverde (ESP) Caisse d'Epargne |
Caisse d'Epargne | Spain |
See also
- Partial listing of major road races in 2005
- Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI)
- List of UCI ProTour records
Notes
References
- ^ UCI asks teams to boycott Paris-Nice (in Dutch)
- ^ Cycling teams to take part in Paris-Nice (in Dutch)
- ^ Agence France-Presse, July 15, 2008. "17 teams will not seek ProTour licenses for '09"
- ^ [1]
- ^ [2]
- ^ http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/cofidis-bouygues-telecom-denied-protour-status
- ^ http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/rumpf-clarifies-lineup-for-2010-races
External links
- Official UCI ProTour website
- Official Union Cycliste Internationale website
- www.cyclingnews.com coverage of ProTour collapse, a 1-April joke
Bibliography
- Luca Rebeggiani/Davide Tondani: Organizational Forms in Professional Cycling - Efficiency Issues of the UCI Pro Tour (describes strengths and weaknesses of the UCI ProTour from a social scientists' point of view)
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