New UCI president acknowledges need for reform in cycling but also for its heritage
International Cycling Union (UCI) president Brian Cookson has said that he is against any plans to create what has been referred to as a World Cycling Series (WCS), but acknowledges that changes are needed in the way that the sport is organised. The WCS evolved out of a proposed “breakaway league,” which sought to wrest control of cycling from the UCI, with the crucial issue of the sharing of TV revenue at its core.
The WCS proposed the creation of ten new four-day races around the World, to exist alongside the three Grand Tours and certain one-day Classics, as the top division of cycling. According to Bloomberg, Cookson feels that “imposing a new league isn’t the right way forward,” however.
The ten new races would push several, well-established races out of the sport’s first division calendar.
“The heritage of cycling is very important,” Cookson said. “You could have, say, a race from Paris to Lyon but it wouldn’t be as exciting as Paris-Roubaix,”
Cookson did confirm, however, that the UCI is communication with BSkyB – the parent company of Sky, which sponsors its eponymous team, as well as British Cycling – and that the UCI “maintains an open mind about whether there’s an opportunity to extend its relationship with cycling as a broadcast partner.”
With several teams folding at the end of this year – including two from the WorldTour in Euskaltel-Euskadi and Vacansoleil-DCM, as well as a ProConti team that rode the Tour de France in Sojasun – and so Cookson does recognise that action is needed to find ways of funding the sport.
“We have to find ways of giving the teams a more sustainable economic situation, otherwise we’ll go into a spiral of decline,” he said.