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UCI announces World Tour reforms

Page 2 - Get up to date with the latest news, scores & standings from the Cycling News Community.
Re: Re:

Koronin said:
Nirvana said:
It's a concatenation of decisions. Bugno asked to rise the minimum number of riders per team because riders felt that the teams were reducing that with the reduction of team sizes in the races, to allow more riders to have a proper program teams need all WT races mandatory, otherwise with 27/30 riders some teams couldn't guarantee a proper number of race days for all the riders but all the WT races mandatory for all WT teams reduce the number of WC for Procontinental teams so UCI was forced to guarantee the right to race the GT for the two best PCT teams and the monuments for the three best, if they wanted.

I don't think it's a big change for the sport, probably the cancellation of WT ranking, the new one day series and pro series are a way bigger change, the races left out of this two new series could easily end up lengthening the already very long list of disappeared races.


Thus making the Pro Conti title/license 100% worthless to most teams as many races won't even bother to give out wildcards because they have a cap of 18 teams to begin with and with this WT teams will CUT the number of continental races they go to thus having continental race organizers scrap races if they can't count on around 4-8 WT teams showing up for those races. If you are a team in a non traditional country the pro conti license won't mean anything to you. I can there being no US pro conti team at all within 2 years based on this because they won't get ANY WT events. I can see a lot more current pro conti teams dropping down to the Conti level because the Pro Conti license isn't worth it to them. I also see more teams and races folding due to this. This is going to hurt the sport as teams and races fold due to these specific rules. The races the WT teams don't want to be at, they definitely won't be sending riders to do anything more than get experience or train. It will then make those races much worse to watch because you will have teams that don't want to be there in the first place and you'll have a major lack of Pro Conti teams to spice things up to even no Pro Conti teams because some of those races have capped the number of teams they want at 18.
But only Tour of California has such autoimposed rule, some other WT races has less than 20 teams but is for other reason, like logistical problems for Tour Down Under or political problem for Tour of Turkey.

PCT teams are for sure favoured by this reform, if you are in the top two you can ride all GTs and monuments if you want, it's like being WT without WT obligations.
 
Re: Re:

Nirvana said:
Koronin said:
Nirvana said:
It's a concatenation of decisions. Bugno asked to rise the minimum number of riders per team because riders felt that the teams were reducing that with the reduction of team sizes in the races, to allow more riders to have a proper program teams need all WT races mandatory, otherwise with 27/30 riders some teams couldn't guarantee a proper number of race days for all the riders but all the WT races mandatory for all WT teams reduce the number of WC for Procontinental teams so UCI was forced to guarantee the right to race the GT for the two best PCT teams and the monuments for the three best, if they wanted.

I don't think it's a big change for the sport, probably the cancellation of WT ranking, the new one day series and pro series are a way bigger change, the races left out of this two new series could easily end up lengthening the already very long list of disappeared races.


Thus making the Pro Conti title/license 100% worthless to most teams as many races won't even bother to give out wildcards because they have a cap of 18 teams to begin with and with this WT teams will CUT the number of continental races they go to thus having continental race organizers scrap races if they can't count on around 4-8 WT teams showing up for those races. If you are a team in a non traditional country the pro conti license won't mean anything to you. I can there being no US pro conti team at all within 2 years based on this because they won't get ANY WT events. I can see a lot more current pro conti teams dropping down to the Conti level because the Pro Conti license isn't worth it to them. I also see more teams and races folding due to this. This is going to hurt the sport as teams and races fold due to these specific rules. The races the WT teams don't want to be at, they definitely won't be sending riders to do anything more than get experience or train. It will then make those races much worse to watch because you will have teams that don't want to be there in the first place and you'll have a major lack of Pro Conti teams to spice things up to even no Pro Conti teams because some of those races have capped the number of teams they want at 18.
But only Tour of California has such autoimposed rule, some other WT races has less than 20 teams but is for other reason, like logistical problems for Tour Down Under or political problem for Tour of Turkey.

PCT teams are for sure favoured by this reform, if you are in the top two you can ride all GTs and monuments if you want, it's like being WT without WT obligations.


Only the top 2 PCT teams are favored. The rest are nothing more than very expensive Conti teams with literally NOTHING to show for it and literally NO REASON to continue at that level unless they happen to be in a country with a Grand Tour and even then only 2 of those teams will have anything to show for it. The rest may as well drop down to Conti level because there is literally no reason to be pro conti. When this goes through expect to see no more than 8 PCT teams. Also expect to see NONE in any country outside of Europe because the PCT license won't be worth the paper it's printed on to those teams. As for California, the NEED to drop back down because being WT is disastrous for them.
 
Re: Re:

Nirvana said:
Koronin said:
Nirvana said:
It's a concatenation of decisions. Bugno asked to rise the minimum number of riders per team because riders felt that the teams were reducing that with the reduction of team sizes in the races, to allow more riders to have a proper program teams need all WT races mandatory, otherwise with 27/30 riders some teams couldn't guarantee a proper number of race days for all the riders but all the WT races mandatory for all WT teams reduce the number of WC for Procontinental teams so UCI was forced to guarantee the right to race the GT for the two best PCT teams and the monuments for the three best, if they wanted.

I don't think it's a big change for the sport, probably the cancellation of WT ranking, the new one day series and pro series are a way bigger change, the races left out of this two new series could easily end up lengthening the already very long list of disappeared races.


Thus making the Pro Conti title/license 100% worthless to most teams as many races won't even bother to give out wildcards because they have a cap of 18 teams to begin with and with this WT teams will CUT the number of continental races they go to thus having continental race organizers scrap races if they can't count on around 4-8 WT teams showing up for those races. If you are a team in a non traditional country the pro conti license won't mean anything to you. I can there being no US pro conti team at all within 2 years based on this because they won't get ANY WT events. I can see a lot more current pro conti teams dropping down to the Conti level because the Pro Conti license isn't worth it to them. I also see more teams and races folding due to this. This is going to hurt the sport as teams and races fold due to these specific rules. The races the WT teams don't want to be at, they definitely won't be sending riders to do anything more than get experience or train. It will then make those races much worse to watch because you will have teams that don't want to be there in the first place and you'll have a major lack of Pro Conti teams to spice things up to even no Pro Conti teams because some of those races have capped the number of teams they want at 18.
But only Tour of California has such autoimposed rule, some other WT races has less than 20 teams but is for other reason, like logistical problems for Tour Down Under or political problem for Tour of Turkey.

PCT teams are for sure favoured by this reform, if you are in the top two you can ride all GTs and monuments if you want, it's like being WT without WT obligations.

The very top end PCT teams would benefit and, as you note, it will again be possible for a BMC or Cervelo to game the system and get the benefits of being WT without the financial costs or enforced participation in races they aren’t interested in. But a large majority of PCT teams will have no hope of major race invites.

With only two wildcards in the hands of race organisers, these will almost automatically go to the biggest domestic teams. It was really only the fourth spot that foreign teams could hope for anyway, once the domestic scene had been protected. Similarly, there will be pressure on organisers to protect the local teams with larger budgets, paid on the expectation that they will be in a GT every year, over experimenting with the smaller budget domestic teams that already can’t expect to be in ever year. There will be less purpose to those smaller domestic teams maintaining PCT status if they can’t use it. And foreign teams will have to be able to buy their way to being nearly sure of being one of the two strongest teams worldwide for it to be worth their while. At the same time there may be a further squeeze on smaller PCT teams if so e smaller races disappear because they can’t attract suddenly busier WT teams any more.

Basically, this is more or less good news for the likes of Cofidis, Direct Energie and Androni, while being a disaster for a Manzana Postobón, Axeon, Burgos, Rusvelo, Delko etc. Maybe we will see a moneybags trying to follow the old Cervelo team model, perhaps Israel Cycling Academy.
 
Make a combined ranking of the Continental and the World Tour calendars.

At the end of the season, the following happens.

Teams ranked 1 - 16 are granted Tier 1 (World Tour) licences. They go to all WT races but aside from that have freedom to choose their calendar.

Teams ranked 17 - 35 are granted Tier 2 (Pro Continental) licences. They are eligible to be wildcards at any WT race.

Up to 5 new teams can be entered to the top 2 levels any given season - in order to do so, however, the total points by their year 1 roster must be higher than the 35th-ranked team the previous season. This is because in my system, the points achieved the previous season are what set the status for the following seson, to protect teams from losing out if a moneyed Johnny-come-lately or a vanity project like Leopard arrives and buys their top names. If Lionel Messi moves to Real Zaragoza, they don't secure promotion based on the goals he scored for Barcelona. However, a new team that buys in top level talent is likely to be wanted at the biggest races so they need a licence that would make them eligible for that - I don't want to disincentivize starting new teams, but I simultaneously don't want to make it too easy to set up a team at the top and squeeze out long term sponsors.

If there are fewer than 5 new teams at this level - which is likely most years - then the rest of the supplemental 5 teams at the ProConti level will be made up of the teams ranked 36th to 40th in order, depending on how many new teams there are - for example if there are two new teams who have rosters whose points add up to more than the 35th-ranked team, the top tiers should consist of:
World Tour: Teams ranked 1 - 16
Pro Continental: Teams ranked 17 - 35, New team A, New team B, Teams ranked 36 - 38
Continental: Teams ranked 39 and below

There should be 40 teams across the top 2 tiers, 16 WT and 24 PCT. This should mean that the best non-WT teams are still in the position to get a decent number of guarantees, the race organisers have a decent amount of flexibility in their invites, there's plenty of riders of quality available to keep domestic calendars alive, there's the opportunity to set up a new team at a decent standard without it being too easy to buy your way to the top, and given a good ProConti team ought to secure plenty of invites with there being additional flexibility for wildcards, there is the scope for promotion and relegation along the lines of a meritocracy; if a team wants to get up to the top tier and misses out on a few WT races, then there is the incentive for them to make a big deal of the .HC and .1 races to help with their prestige, plus also it incentivises some of the lower ranked WT teams to supplement their points with the national and continental calendars on the basis that getting a decent amount of points for good results in a few .HC and .1 races should outweigh mediocrity in a WT race, although I would also increase points available for stage wins in stage races and increase the difference between podium and non-podium GC positions to try to encourage more aggressive racing too.
 
Re:

Koronin said:
I'm not sure you'll get 24 PTC teams even with your idea. However, I still think all WT teams should have the ability to skip say 5 WT races that they really don't want to go to for whatever reason.
It's not about the funding. It's about the ranking. If you're ranked 17 to 35, you get wildcard eligibility. Of course, several of those down in the 30-35 area are not going to get many wildcard invites, because there will be more attractive teams to the WT organisers higher up in the ranks. But then, if they're happy with that role, they needn't worry about being ranked 33rd or 36th, and if they aspire to improve their position they then need to go hard in the continental calendars and race those really hard to improve their points totals in the aim of getting up to a better position the following year.
 
Re: Re:

Libertine Seguros said:
Koronin said:
I'm not sure you'll get 24 PTC teams even with your idea. However, I still think all WT teams should have the ability to skip say 5 WT races that they really don't want to go to for whatever reason.
It's not about the funding. It's about the ranking. If you're ranked 17 to 35, you get wildcard eligibility. Of course, several of those down in the 30-35 area are not going to get many wildcard invites, because there will be more attractive teams to the WT organisers higher up in the ranks. But then, if they're happy with that role, they needn't worry about being ranked 33rd or 36th, and if they aspire to improve their position they then need to go hard in the continental calendars and race those really hard to improve their points totals in the aim of getting up to a better position the following year.


Those teams wouldn't want that license due to cost, they want the Conti license and not care about the WT races. The only way you'd get teams in that group wanting a Pro Conti license is if they are countries that have a bunch of WT events where they are likely to get the wild card invites based on geography. Otherwise due to cost I'd think they'd be happier being a Conti team.
 
Re: Re:

Zinoviev Letter said:
Nirvana said:
Koronin said:
Nirvana said:
It's a concatenation of decisions. Bugno asked to rise the minimum number of riders per team because riders felt that the teams were reducing that with the reduction of team sizes in the races, to allow more riders to have a proper program teams need all WT races mandatory, otherwise with 27/30 riders some teams couldn't guarantee a proper number of race days for all the riders but all the WT races mandatory for all WT teams reduce the number of WC for Procontinental teams so UCI was forced to guarantee the right to race the GT for the two best PCT teams and the monuments for the three best, if they wanted.

I don't think it's a big change for the sport, probably the cancellation of WT ranking, the new one day series and pro series are a way bigger change, the races left out of this two new series could easily end up lengthening the already very long list of disappeared races.


Thus making the Pro Conti title/license 100% worthless to most teams as many races won't even bother to give out wildcards because they have a cap of 18 teams to begin with and with this WT teams will CUT the number of continental races they go to thus having continental race organizers scrap races if they can't count on around 4-8 WT teams showing up for those races. If you are a team in a non traditional country the pro conti license won't mean anything to you. I can there being no US pro conti team at all within 2 years based on this because they won't get ANY WT events. I can see a lot more current pro conti teams dropping down to the Conti level because the Pro Conti license isn't worth it to them. I also see more teams and races folding due to this. This is going to hurt the sport as teams and races fold due to these specific rules. The races the WT teams don't want to be at, they definitely won't be sending riders to do anything more than get experience or train. It will then make those races much worse to watch because you will have teams that don't want to be there in the first place and you'll have a major lack of Pro Conti teams to spice things up to even no Pro Conti teams because some of those races have capped the number of teams they want at 18.
But only Tour of California has such autoimposed rule, some other WT races has less than 20 teams but is for other reason, like logistical problems for Tour Down Under or political problem for Tour of Turkey.

PCT teams are for sure favoured by this reform, if you are in the top two you can ride all GTs and monuments if you want, it's like being WT without WT obligations.

The very top end PCT teams would benefit and, as you note, it will again be possible for a BMC or Cervelo to game the system and get the benefits of being WT without the financial costs or enforced participation in races they aren’t interested in. But a large majority of PCT teams will have no hope of major race invites.

With only two wildcards in the hands of race organisers, these will almost automatically go to the biggest domestic teams. It was really only the fourth spot that foreign teams could hope for anyway, once the domestic scene had been protected. Similarly, there will be pressure on organisers to protect the local teams with larger budgets, paid on the expectation that they will be in a GT every year, over experimenting with the smaller budget domestic teams that already can’t expect to be in ever year. There will be less purpose to those smaller domestic teams maintaining PCT status if they can’t use it. And foreign teams will have to be able to buy their way to being nearly sure of being one of the two strongest teams worldwide for it to be worth their while. At the same time there may be a further squeeze on smaller PCT teams if so e smaller races disappear because they can’t attract suddenly busier WT teams any more.

Basically, this is more or less good news for the likes of Cofidis, Direct Energie and Androni, while being a disaster for a Manzana Postobón, Axeon, Burgos, Rusvelo, Delko etc. Maybe we will see a moneybags trying to follow the old Cervelo team model, perhaps Israel Cycling Academy.
At least half of the PCT teams already survives without any possibility to go to a GT (and probably also no interest in going), the only PCT teams that could take a blow for this are italian and french ones but if a Bardiani or a Wilier disappear won't be a disgrace since are almost useless teams and french teams could easily survive without the Tour because they always have a pretty good calendar in the domestic scene plus belgium.
And we didn't know how the new Pro Series will look like, could be a good playground for PCT teams, the only concern for me is the destiny of the races that will stay in the continental circuits, if i were at the head of UCI my first concern would be trying to revive old races that are disappeared not relegating and treaten even more races.
 
Re: Re:

Nirvana said:
Zinoviev Letter said:
Nirvana said:
Koronin said:
Nirvana said:
It's a concatenation of decisions. Bugno asked to rise the minimum number of riders per team because riders felt that the teams were reducing that with the reduction of team sizes in the races, to allow more riders to have a proper program teams need all WT races mandatory, otherwise with 27/30 riders some teams couldn't guarantee a proper number of race days for all the riders but all the WT races mandatory for all WT teams reduce the number of WC for Procontinental teams so UCI was forced to guarantee the right to race the GT for the two best PCT teams and the monuments for the three best, if they wanted.

I don't think it's a big change for the sport, probably the cancellation of WT ranking, the new one day series and pro series are a way bigger change, the races left out of this two new series could easily end up lengthening the already very long list of disappeared races.


Thus making the Pro Conti title/license 100% worthless to most teams as many races won't even bother to give out wildcards because they have a cap of 18 teams to begin with and with this WT teams will CUT the number of continental races they go to thus having continental race organizers scrap races if they can't count on around 4-8 WT teams showing up for those races. If you are a team in a non traditional country the pro conti license won't mean anything to you. I can there being no US pro conti team at all within 2 years based on this because they won't get ANY WT events. I can see a lot more current pro conti teams dropping down to the Conti level because the Pro Conti license isn't worth it to them. I also see more teams and races folding due to this. This is going to hurt the sport as teams and races fold due to these specific rules. The races the WT teams don't want to be at, they definitely won't be sending riders to do anything more than get experience or train. It will then make those races much worse to watch because you will have teams that don't want to be there in the first place and you'll have a major lack of Pro Conti teams to spice things up to even no Pro Conti teams because some of those races have capped the number of teams they want at 18.
But only Tour of California has such autoimposed rule, some other WT races has less than 20 teams but is for other reason, like logistical problems for Tour Down Under or political problem for Tour of Turkey.

PCT teams are for sure favoured by this reform, if you are in the top two you can ride all GTs and monuments if you want, it's like being WT without WT obligations.

The very top end PCT teams would benefit and, as you note, it will again be possible for a BMC or Cervelo to game the system and get the benefits of being WT without the financial costs or enforced participation in races they aren’t interested in. But a large majority of PCT teams will have no hope of major race invites.

With only two wildcards in the hands of race organisers, these will almost automatically go to the biggest domestic teams. It was really only the fourth spot that foreign teams could hope for anyway, once the domestic scene had been protected. Similarly, there will be pressure on organisers to protect the local teams with larger budgets, paid on the expectation that they will be in a GT every year, over experimenting with the smaller budget domestic teams that already can’t expect to be in ever year. There will be less purpose to those smaller domestic teams maintaining PCT status if they can’t use it. And foreign teams will have to be able to buy their way to being nearly sure of being one of the two strongest teams worldwide for it to be worth their while. At the same time there may be a further squeeze on smaller PCT teams if so e smaller races disappear because they can’t attract suddenly busier WT teams any more.

Basically, this is more or less good news for the likes of Cofidis, Direct Energie and Androni, while being a disaster for a Manzana Postobón, Axeon, Burgos, Rusvelo, Delko etc. Maybe we will see a moneybags trying to follow the old Cervelo team model, perhaps Israel Cycling Academy.
At least half of the PCT teams already survives without any possibility to go to a GT (and probably also no interest in going), the only PCT teams that could take a blow for this are italian and french ones but if a Bardiani or a Wilier disappear won't be a disgrace since are almost useless teams and french teams could easily survive without the Tour because they always have a pretty good calendar in the domestic scene plus belgium.
And we didn't know how the new Pro Series will look like, could be a good playground for PCT teams, the only concern for me is the destiny of the races that will stay in the continental circuits, if i were at the head of UCI my first concern would be trying to revive old races that are disappeared not relegating and treaten even more races.

Without invites to California the US Pro Conti teams will totally disappear as they would have no reason to be Pro Conti and not incentive. Or are US based teams of no importance? The European races don't mean anything to the US based teams as they currently don't get invites there, but Cali means literally the entire season to these teams. Also this continental circuit most of those races NEED between 1 and a handful of WT teams to show up and if they can't get them due to the new requirements of those teams being required to go to ALL WT events I can see many of those races throwing in the towel and races disappearing. Also it sounds like ALL WT races MUST invite the top 2 Pro Conti teams first meaning they along with the monuments AND GTs are being restricted as to who they can invite as wild cards. I can see some of them dropping down to the Conti level and praying some of the WT teams will still come so they can invite the teams they actually want there not the teams they are FORCED to invite.
 
They are talking a lot about a one-day races cup but what do you guys think about the idea of a time trial cup to give the specialists more options?

You could have ten to twelve races of varying degree to test them in all aspects of the discipline. 11 unique races to spice it up.

8 individual time trials.
1. 5 km urban, super-technical prologue with a lot of corners and obstacles (could be things such as sett, off-roads bike paths, bridges)
2. 10 km MTT on a 8%+ climb.
3. 30 minute race in the velodrome. (in order to promote the hour record)
4. 30-39 km puncheur-friendly time trial with 3 steep, short hills (all 1-2 km at 8-12%). Maybe as a Ardennes-warm up.
5. 40-49 km lumpy ITT in rolling hills featuring narrow roads and gravel sections.
6. 50-59 km flat-ish, time trial with a single medium mountain (5-6 km at 6-7% or something like that) in it.
7. 60-69 km Northern-classics inspired time trial with plenty of helligen climbs, flat cobbles and narrow, twisty roads. Risk of losing it all due to a puncture or crash is high. Maybe as a cobbles season warm-up.
8. 70 km+ flat, non-technical power-TT along a windy coast.

3 team time trials.
1. 50 km five-man TTT (3 riders have to make it to the finish) with cobbles sectors and hills.
2. 60-65 km high altitude quartet-TTT (2 riders have to finish together) with two, long mountains. (think the Stelvio Pass or Galibier type of climbs)
2. 100 km+ TTT with 6 riders (4 have to finish together). A pancake flat race for the specialists across a windy coastline.
 
Re: Re:

Koronin said:
Without invites to California the US Pro Conti teams will totally disappear as they would have no reason to be Pro Conti and not incentive. Or are US based teams of no importance? The European races don't mean anything to the US based teams as they currently don't get invites there, but Cali means literally the entire season to these teams. Also this continental circuit most of those races NEED between 1 and a handful of WT teams to show up and if they can't get them due to the new requirements of those teams being required to go to ALL WT events I can see many of those races throwing in the towel and races disappearing. Also it sounds like ALL WT races MUST invite the top 2 Pro Conti teams first meaning they along with the monuments AND GTs are being restricted as to who they can invite as wild cards. I can see some of them dropping down to the Conti level and praying some of the WT teams will still come so they can invite the teams they actually want there not the teams they are FORCED to invite.
I didn't think they'll be affected by that, you should consider that United Healtcare has already announced months ago that is going to stop its sponsorship at the end of the season and the team will likely continue as continental or even disband, Novo Nordisk is a special case because its mission is a more social one, not to be competitive at high level, and the other three are de facto development team that mostly ride 2.2/2.2U races and went PCT to have a more European schedule.
 
Re:

Velolover2 said:
They are talking a lot about a one-day races cup but what do you guys think about the idea of a time trial cup to give the specialists more options?

You could have ten to twelve races of varying degree to test them in all aspects of the discipline. 11 unique races to spice it up.

8 individual time trials.
1. 5 km urban, super-technical prologue with a lot of corners and obstacles (could be things such as sett, off-roads bike paths, bridges)
2. 10 km MTT on a 8%+ climb.
3. 30 minute race in the velodrome. (in order to promote the hour record)
4. 30-39 km puncheur-friendly time trial with 3 steep, short hills (all 1-2 km at 8-12%). Maybe as a Ardennes-warm up.
5. 40-49 km lumpy ITT in rolling hills featuring narrow roads and gravel sections.
6. 50-59 km flat-ish, time trial with a single medium mountain (5-6 km at 6-7% or something like that) in it.
7. 60-69 km Northern-classics inspired time trial with plenty of helligen climbs, flat cobbles and narrow, twisty roads. Risk of losing it all due to a puncture or crash is high. Maybe as a cobbles season warm-up.
8. 70 km+ flat, non-technical power-TT along a windy coast.

3 team time trials.
1. 50 km five-man TTT (3 riders have to make it to the finish) with cobbles sectors and hills.
2. 60-65 km high altitude quartet-TTT (2 riders have to finish together) with two, long mountains. (think the Stelvio Pass or Galibier type of climbs)
2. 100 km+ TTT with 6 riders (4 have to finish together). A pancake flat race for the specialists across a windy coastline.
In the past there was a good number of TT one day races (and also duo TT), some were considered very prestigious like the GP des Nations (I mean the real one, not the actual rebranded Chrono des Herbiers), GP di Lugano, GP di Castrocare, Trofeo Barqcchi, the fact that are all disappeared probably means also that there is a lack of interest in the discipline and the continuous reduction of TT mileage in stage races doesn't help. I'm not sure that such a cup could work, maybe they could try to put one or two TT in the classic series, in the first years of the old World Cup the last race was a TT so it's doable.
 
Re: Re:

Nirvana said:
Koronin said:
Without invites to California the US Pro Conti teams will totally disappear as they would have no reason to be Pro Conti and not incentive. Or are US based teams of no importance? The European races don't mean anything to the US based teams as they currently don't get invites there, but Cali means literally the entire season to these teams. Also this continental circuit most of those races NEED between 1 and a handful of WT teams to show up and if they can't get them due to the new requirements of those teams being required to go to ALL WT events I can see many of those races throwing in the towel and races disappearing. Also it sounds like ALL WT races MUST invite the top 2 Pro Conti teams first meaning they along with the monuments AND GTs are being restricted as to who they can invite as wild cards. I can see some of them dropping down to the Conti level and praying some of the WT teams will still come so they can invite the teams they actually want there not the teams they are FORCED to invite.
I didn't think they'll be affected by that, you should consider that United Healtcare has already announced months ago that is going to stop its sponsorship at the end of the season and the team will likely continue as continental or even disband, Novo Nordisk is a special case because its mission is a more social one, not to be competitive at high level, and the other three are de facto development team that mostly ride 2.2/2.2U races and went PCT to have a more European schedule.


That team flat out said if they couldn't find sponsorship they would disband. They are disbanding. There are currently 2 other US Pro Conti teams that does not include Novo Nordisk that have sponsorship for next year. If they can't get into California they have literally no reason to be at that level. If they need to race in Europe there is NO REASON for them to A) be used based or B) care about developing US based riders. They WILL drop to Conti and thus the US will have NO PRO CONTI teams because Novo Nordisk does not count. They cannot afford to race most in Europe as that defeats the entire purpose of those teams which is to develop US riders and ride in front of a US audience. Thus making them go to Europe to race means there is no reason for them to exist. What would be the reason to have any US based Pro Conti team? The answer is NONE. If you are going to race most in Europe you NEED to be European based NOT US based. This is to KILL road racing in the US. The sport is already a niche sport in the US and hardly on TV at all. It would not take much to totally kill it over here. A lot of races have folded and this will only push the folding of more races and ensure even less TV coverage of races although you can't get much less TV than what we currently have. It's not that hard to find other things to do, so fi they don't want the US market, and these reforms are flat out saying they do NOT want the US market, then why should US fans care.
 

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