UCI chief backs change to a week-long Tour for women
Tour de France organiser ASO is actively working on a week-long version of the race for women, said UCI president David Lappartient, who added that he is pressuring it to go further and introduce a 10-day race which would shadow the final 10 days of the men’s Tour.
The president of cycling’s world governing body also said that ASO is working on a women’s version of Paris-roubaix race for 2020.
Lappartient, in London yesterday for the Rouleur Classic event, gave a wide-ranging interview to a handful of outlets in which he discussed the controversy around the World Anti-doping Agency (Wada) and Team Sky’s Tour stranglehold.
He also took aim at Sir Bradley Wiggins’s recent description of the disgraced Lance Armstrong as an “icon” of the sport, dismissing those comments as “unacceptable”.
ASO found itself heavily criticised last week after it unveiled next year’s Tour route but revealed that La Course by Le Tour, the women’s race launched in 2014, would once again be limited to one day. Not only that, but La Course
2019 is due to take place in Pau on July 23, the same day as the men’s stage 16 in Nimes, some 500 kilometres away.
“I told them, ‘You are the leading organisation in the world so you have to take your part of the responsibility to support women’s cycling’,” Lappartient said.
“I know there are some [logistical] difficulties. They are thinking maybe of a one-week stage race. I would support this, but I told them, ‘Why not the last 10 days, the same stages for men and women?’”
On Wiggins’s description of Armstrong as the “perfect” Tour de France rider, he said: “I thought it unbelievable. In supporting Lance Armstrong, who’s been banned for life for cheating, for me this isn’t acceptable.”
Lappartient said it was time for a review of Wada and that with some five per cent of urine tests in cycling showing traces of opioid painkiller Tramadol, he supported a ban from the start of the 2019 road racing. He said: “If you need Tramadol, no problem, but you will not be able to ride and take part in a race.”
Addressing Team Sky’s dominance of the Tour, he said an “attractivity group” would be set up to look at ways to enliven racing. Budget caps, the use of live power meters and in-race radio comms would all be up for review, he said.