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UCI ProTour

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UCI ProTour
Current season, competition or edition:
Current sports event 2008 UCI ProTour
File:UCI Pro Tour.svg
SportRoad bicycle racing
Founded2005
No. of teams18
CountryEurope and Australia
Most recent
champion(s)		Cadel Evans
Team CSC
Spain

The UCI ProTour is a competition under the International Cycling Union (UCI). Created by Hein Verbruggen, former president of the UCI, it comprises a series of road bicycle races and a number of 'ProTour' cycling teams, each of whom are required to compete in every round of the competition. This system was created for 2005 and in many ways replaces 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 as of July 2008 its future is increasingly uncertain due to most of its member teams announcing plans to not seek ProTour licenses for the 2009 racing season.[1]

Licensing

The ProTour licences are given to 20 teams, to which sponsors must commit 4 years of sponsorship. The exception is 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.

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]

From 2008 the South Australian Tour Down Under became the first ProTour event to be held outside of Continental Europe and within the Southern Hemisphere.

List of current UCI ProTour teams

Code Official Team Name Country Website
ALM Ag2r-La Mondiale  France ag2r-cyclisme.com
AST Astana Team  Luxembourg astana-cyclingteam.com
BTL Bouygues Télécom  France equipebouyguestelecom.fr
GCE Caisse d'Epargne  Spain cyclisme-caisse-epargne.fr
COF Cofidis, Le Crédit par Téléphone  France equipe-cofidis.com
C.A Crédit Agricole  France credit-agricole.fr
CSC Team CSC Saxo Bank  Denmark teamcsc-saxobank.com
COL Team Columbia (formerly T-Mobile Team (TMO))  United States highroadsports.com
EUS Euskaltel-Euskadi  Spain fundacioneuskadi.com
FDJ Française des Jeux  France fdjeux.com
GST Gerolsteiner  Germany team-gerolsteiner.de
LAM Lampre-Fondital  Italy lampre-fondital.com
LIQ Liquigas  Italy teamliquigas.it
MRM Team Milram  Germany team-milram.de
QST Quick Step  Belgium qsi-cycling.com
RAB Rabobank  Netherlands rabobank.nl Template:Nl icon
SDV Scott-American Beef  Spain saunierduvalteam.com
SIL Silence-Lotto  Belgium silence-lotto.be

List of former UCI ProTour teams

Code Official Team Name Country UCI ProTour Years
DSC Discovery Channel Pro Cycling Team  United States 2005-2007
FAS Fassa Bortolo  Italy 2005
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 Italy Danilo Di Luca
Italy Liquigas-Bianchi 		Denmark Team CSC  Italy
2006 Spain Alejandro Valverde
Spain Caisse d'Epargne-Illes Balears 		Denmark Team CSC  Spain
2007 Australia Cadel Evans
Belgium Predictor-Lotto 		Denmark Team CSC  Spain
2008 Spain Alejandro Valverde
Spain Caisse d'Epargne-Illes Balears 		Spain Caisse d'Epargne  Spain

See also

External links

References

  1. ^ UCI asks teams to boycott Paris-Nice (in Dutch)
  2. ^ Cycling teams to take part in Paris-Nice (in Dutch)
  3. ^ Agence France-Presse, July 15, 2008. "17 teams will not seek ProTour licenses for '09"

Bibliography

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