More races could be axed as pro cycling walks tightrope
Former UCI president Brian Cookson optimistic but warns fans to expect further disruption, reports Vern Pitt
Further race cancellations seem inevitable, former UCI president Brain Cookson has said, after the first races to be scrapped from the revised Worldtour calendar were announced last week.
The tightrope the sport is walking as it tries to navigate its way through the coronavirus pandemic became starkly apparent as the Canadian Grand Prix Québec and Grand Prix Montréal were both cut amid coronavirus concerns.
President of both races, Serge Arsenault, said his organisation had tried to reconcile racing with an appropriate level of safety but it had proved impossible. He said: “Too many uncertainties remain, such as the opening of borders, compulsory quarantine, authorisation to hold gatherings and so on. It would not have been responsible or respectful towards all those who have trusted us since 2010 to postpone this decision further.”
That announcement came just days after top Women’s Worldtour team CCC-LIV was one of three squads that withdrew from two one-day races in the Navarre region of Spain. Manager Eric van den Boom said: “We have set ourselves a very strict health protocol in recent months. All this to minimise the risks of contamination with
Covid-19. We were delighted to finally be able to race again. However, on Wednesday, it turned out that the health risks in the Navarre region were too great.”
Lizzie Deignan (Trek-segafredo) and Hannah Barnes (Canyon-sram) both competed. The races were won by world champion Annemiek van Vleuten (Mitchelton-scott).
The week before, Mathieu van der Poel’s Alpecin-fenix team withdrew from the Sibiu Tour in Romania over similar worries and were followed by Androni Giocattoli and Gazprom.
Meanwhile, stadium sports such as Premier League football faced far fewer complications as play resumed.
All this serves to demonstrate the unique and difficult situation road cycling finds itself in just as Worldtour racing is due to restart with Strade Bianche on Saturday. With multiple teams from across the globe travelling large distances and often competing shoulder-to-shoulder with the public, the risk level is high.
Few know the complications of administering the global sport, and organising events on the ground, as well as former UCI president Brain Cookson.
“Aspirations and hopes are coming up against cold, hard reality,” he said. “We’ve got a very fluid situation from country to country, even from town to town… I’ve always felt the UCI’S plans were very, very ambitious, frankly. But I guess they have to be. What’s that phrase? If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.”
He added: “I don’t think those two events in Canada are
“Hopes are coming up against cold, hard reality”
going to be the last to be cancelled. I hope that as much of the calendar as possible can take place. But we could be looking at more cancellations as time goes by.”
Cookson said that it was at least heartening that while the Canadian races are “great events in their own right” they aren’t part of cycling’s core of major events. He added: “It’s the little events, the smaller races that are run on a wing and a prayer, that I think are going to experience the biggest problems.”
He said: “Are we going to see the Tour and the European Championships and the Worlds and the Classics take place in the form that we’re used to? I’m beginning to be a little doubtful. It seems to me that it’s only going to take one problem at one of those big races, involving more than one team or more than one rider, for a major incident to blow up.”
Cookson compared it to the shortening of last year’s Tour de France when it was hit by landslides and said the sport, and the fans, need to be flexible in what it expects.
The fact is that the compressed calendar will make it very hard for teams to be flexible. Many are stretched across triple race programmes and even where they aren’t, the gaps between one race and the next are often incredibly small. Team staff CW have spoken to feel daunted by the logistics involved. With resources spread thinly if riders or staff get sick, have to quarantine, or can’t cross borders, they could find themselves in trouble.
Complicating matters further is the fact that the regulations and permissions around Covid-19 are different from country to country, region to region and race to race. Jumbo-visma manager Richard Plugge told US publication Velonews last week that he felt the UCI could help by having “a protocol in place that is even stricter than what the local authorities have”.
But Cookson was of the view that the UCI had to be led by national and local governments. “I think the UCI has some good protocols in place but what happens if the worst comes to the worst? We’ll see, but ultimately those things are going to be out of the hands of the sporting authorities,” he said.