The Hitch said:
Great argument. Let other sports fill the void in these open regions and make cycling even more a minority sport.
Why?
Because I don't like change. I hate change so much I can't settle for the top 15 races in the world to be the traditional European ones (3gts, 5 monuments, Gw,fw, tirreno,Suisse, dauphine,css, pv)
No I'm so stubborn I demand that ALL the biggest races must be the ones in my continent.
Even at the expense of the sport itself.
There's a balance,Hitch.
Globalisation for the sake of it has a very mixed record across sports. Look at the debacle Qatar 2022 is threatening to be. At some of the utterly pointless 'destination' F1 races.
You have to ask yourself, what exactly are you trying to do in these countries or regions? Is a one off, corrupted, unloved race in Beijing doing anything much for competitive cycling in China - and this is a country with a LOT of bicycles.
Maybe it's just me, but globalising the elite section of the men's race calendar seems, to me, to be the proper end point of the process, not the start. Like Pat promising Mountain Bike world cups to all and sundry - how does that grow the sport, really. The UCI visit, race, leave. A few local federation bigwigs get a few days out, and then..nada
A world Tour race isn't the seed to grow cycling, it's the reward and end game for previous success. You build up to it, not down from it.
Elite sport, as a spectator activity, is culturally a big thing in the developed world. For a reason; historically they had the time and money to devote to their passtimes. The poorest Flemish tradesman is a very rich man compared to the workers in the sweatshops - and has been for a very long time. Football may have bucked that trend to some extent - cricket in India, but in the smaller sports, it holds.
You can't just transplant that to the developing world and assume it'll work. You need to grow the whole thing culturally and organically. And yes, that means some of the arch-globalisers having to pull their horns in - not because we're all pro-euro bigots, but because we have to face the economic and the cultural realities.
And that's not a euro centric point. Japan, South Africa, parts of Brazil and argentina have a similar huge passion for spectator sport.