New 2012 World Tour stage race in China

And also Saxo license up for review, just too bad the UCI don't know that the name of the team now are without Sungaard ;)

4 months ago LittleOldLady 26 comments 0 recs |

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Good ol' Pat

He’s a genius, found a way to add at least one if not two weeks to the year. Thus squeezing “a quart into a pint pot”. The Chinese Meat Marketing Board are the sponsors. Maybe.

Rafa's on peds

by Maratsafin on Feb 10, 2012 2:17 PM EST reply actions

What the hell Fat Pat...that's it, make the season even longer jackass.

Why not make it a week after Down Under or something

KRUoPIS!!!1!!

by Vlaanderen90 on Feb 10, 2012 2:39 PM EST reply actions

What's wrong with the season being longer?

It’s not like tennis or something where you have to play every match yourself. Cycling is a team sport, and heavily reliant on deep teams – there are even events that occur simultaneously! So all this does is encourage top teams to take on more promising young riders and give them a shot in some races nobody else is interested in (and help those riders get attention faster). I suppose it’s bad for the teams in that they might have to employ a couple more riders – but given the overall cost of running a team, is the salary of two extra journeymen really that significant?

by Wastrel on Feb 11, 2012 8:43 AM EST up reply actions

It doesn't necessarily mean young guys will get to ride those races...and if your riding into November on the road

those young guys will be wasted if you want them to ride early next year at Tour Down Under or early races.

Also, its the World Tour…they should be the best races of the whole year, not some race decided in the first stage. There are races in China (Hainan and Qinghai) that deserve WT recognition ahead of made-up UCI races, that get chosen because there is money in it for the UCI. Also, unless there is TV coverage of the races…fans won’t care much about the races or not as much at least as if they did have coverage. It isn’t building cycling in China because they only get one team into the race and fans aren’t allowed to come watch the race. Your shooting teams in the foot that have a smaller budget to having to continuously race their riders.

Also, it would cost at least 60,000 more euros to employ two journey men riders…and that is just minimum wage so your scrapping at the bottom of the barrel for riders to sign. If your going all the way to China with a team full of young riders who have had full years as it is, your going for 2-3 weeks straight with tired riders and no to very little prize money

KRUoPIS!!!1!!

by Vlaanderen90 on Feb 11, 2012 5:40 PM EST up reply actions

respectfully

as stated below, is easy to view eneco and poland as made up races, tdu also to an extent, and certainly the canadian ones. All of them make money for the uci through licensing fees if nothing else, and all of the world tour (incl Beijing) is viewable where i live if am prepared to pay for the coverage (eurosport) and in many other places too.

Q Lake takes place during the tdf so has as much chance of being upgraded to world tour as the tour of austria, and Hainan, despite a huge prize fund, currently attracts Astana and pro conti teams. Japan, Langkawi also struggle for WT teams. And arguably if Hainan upgraded without a replacement then chances for far-east asian teams to race against “the best” reduced to nil (if it even really existed). And what is known about the chinese WT races is that it really doesn’t cost the teams very much to attend, very adequately compensated for attendance.
All the new race may really entail is an extension of the commitment to attend Beijing, similar to attending Qatar/Oman, and that is in a time frame that takes you no further than Lombardia (before the move) ever did.

So back to UCI organising = bad when all said and done

by andrewp on Feb 12, 2012 1:22 PM EST up reply actions

If the UCI wants to develop cycling internationally, they should reward growing international races with WT status

Not create races they own on the WT calendar.

But that’s assuming the UCI’s goal is to develop cycling internationally and not pocket big checks from promoting China to an international audience.

"Oh man, it’s going to take days to kill all these people!"

by ncrow on Feb 10, 2012 3:00 PM EST reply actions

If the last WT race introduced in China drew threats of a boycott...

I wonder how teams will react to another. Seriously, Pat, making the season even longer?

I NEED MOAR MUD

by Douglas Ansel on Feb 10, 2012 3:49 PM EST reply actions

threat

that was over the radio ban which was a feature of bejing. the bejing race was dull as so many starter races are and I can’t imagine this will be much different.

I can’t understand for the life of me why they haven’t tried to grow cycling regionally and integrating once progress is underway as they have done so successfully in football and to some extent in basketball or rugby.

however I sense from the posts that everyone including me thinks a big fat brown wallet has been changing hands :(

Rafa's on peds

by Maratsafin on Feb 10, 2012 5:42 PM EST up reply actions

fucking assholes

i’m all for more races, but not uci-promoted and mandated ones, especially when so many of them are falling off, or threatening to, the calendar. give some of those wt status, not some bullshit race on the other side of the world that nobody, here or there, gives a fuck about.

this is the last time i will ever mention those bullshit races. they are non-existent to me.

"Ants don’t worry, they operate like a fantastic team, they accept obstacles and deal with them in a positive manner, they don’t complain and remain positive. An ant doesn’t work on emotion, is proactive and always chooses the ant role."

by ant1 on Feb 10, 2012 4:40 PM EST reply actions

serious question

(overlooking the leapfrog straight into the world tour for a moment) why shouldn’t the UCI promote and make money from races? Especially ones that dont really impact on the current calendar. Where is the down side in organising races that (almost certainly) compensate teams for the cost of attending – that may just return a profit that can be used elsewhere?

by andrewp on Feb 10, 2012 6:05 PM EST up reply actions

Cause they're not supposed to be race organisers

that’s a huge conflict of interest there

Coffee cures all. ~ Gav

by tgsgirl on Feb 10, 2012 6:12 PM EST up reply actions

they already are race organisers

and fund a huge amount of their operation from them.

Branching out in a moderate way doesn’t have to be de facto bad, if done carefully

by andrewp on Feb 10, 2012 6:23 PM EST up reply actions

up until last year,

it was just 1 race (with many subraces), right? the world championships? no trade teams, venue changes every year, it makes sense that they would run it. and the uci promotes that, i would assume, not some private entity run by the mcquaid family.

by ant1 on Feb 10, 2012 6:32 PM EST up reply actions

No, it's a textbook conflict of interest

A conflict of interest doesn’t even have to be realized. It just has to be possible or even perceived as existing.

At the end of the day, the UCI is a governing body. Not an organizer. Not a professional league.

"Oh man, it’s going to take days to kill all these people!"

by ncrow on Feb 10, 2012 6:40 PM EST up reply actions

assumes a doomsday scenario just for the existence of a conflict of interest

many sports governing bodies organise and promote and licence events and deal with the ramifications accordingly.

Cycling’s governing body organises an arms length company to do the same. Far as can tell that profit making company has ex officio directors, perhaps it is not being run as a private feifdom, and to date noone knows where the profits have ended up, but no reason to suspect it wont be chanelled back to the UCI some way (At least the loans were clearly there for all to see, and hardly taken underhand or stolen anonymously – they were in the annual reports both years as clear as day)

Some assume it is lining people’s individual pockets, rather than perhaps contemplate it would be the height of idiocy not to set up a limited entity to take the initial risk rather than put the finances of the whole governing body on the line when taking such a step.

Sometimes a perceived conflict of interest can keep people honest, as well as dishonest.

by andrewp on Feb 10, 2012 7:02 PM EST up reply actions

I haven't thought about the personal enrichment issues.

The simple question is: would the Tour of Hangzhou be a WT event before its first edition if the UCI did not own the company organizing it?

I don’t see how one could say yes with a straight face. And if the answer is no, it’s a conflict of interest that undermines road cycling as a professional sport.

"Oh man, it’s going to take days to kill all these people!"

by ncrow on Feb 10, 2012 8:47 PM EST up reply actions

applying similar argument to the overnight appearance

of the Canadian one day races, or as to why Eneco morphed out of the smaller tours in that area, or how Poland was suddenly upgraded in class overnight and landed in the pro tour – then road cycling already severely compromised as a professional sport.
A conflict of interest can be claimed for promoting and organising the World Tour in itself. The only material difference is that GCP add an extra layer by linking UCI in organising as well as licensing the race, and where on the scale between horrifying and welcome that develop is.

And such a standard dooms the credibility of any breakaway league before it starts – as the organiser, the races, and teams involved will be directly benefiting from how the races are structured, marketed, televised etc, and by extension policed etc

by andrewp on Feb 11, 2012 5:45 AM EST up reply actions

I don't understand the problem

The strategic body are stepping in to fulfill strategic goals that aren’t being met by the free market. Are there hundreds of succesful high-level cycling races in China that the UCI should be recognising instead? [Also to be considered: the Chinese government seems to be a lot friendlier toward things with a big international body stamp on them].

As people have pointed out, riders don’t go to the chinese races. So how will you get riders to go there without either offering massive prizes (not currently feasible) or offering inflated ranking points?

If this isn’t the way to expand the sport in China, what on earth is?

by Wastrel on Feb 11, 2012 8:40 AM EST up reply actions

Not hundreds

But there are other Chinese stage races on the UCI Asian tour. Tour of Qinghai Lake in the middle of the summer and Tour of Hainan in late October have had decent startfields.

Badger, badger, badger, badger, badger, badger...

by TheFigurehead on Feb 11, 2012 10:44 AM EST up reply actions