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Inside the AIGCP’s Challenge to the UCI

Just weeks after Velon filed suit against the UCI over its alleged anti-competitive business practices, and only three days after the Cycling Anti-Doping Foundation (CADF) called into question other recent initiatives by the UCI, the association of men’s professional cycling teams – better known by its French acronym AIGCP – circulated a strongly-worded letter to the UCI, voicing various concerns about its organizational, financial, and sporting obligations. The AIGCP is attempting to force some serious and long overdue debate about fundamental problems in the sport, by raising a broad range of structural and economic matters in a very public letter. And while the letter proposes a stronger collaboration between the key stakeholders, like the previous Velon and CADF actions, it is symbolic of the problems dogging the whole sport – continuous in-fighting between various interest groups...

Calling Time Out On the Team Time Trial

Cycling’s association of teams, the Association International des Groupes Cyclistes Professionels (AIGCP), recently issued a strong rebuke to the sport’s ruling body – the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI). Generally fed up with the pace of reforms and with the economic pressures they face in trying to field teams for all of the WorldTour’s far-flung races, the teams voted to boycott the upcoming UCI World Team Time Trial (TTT) Championship in Doha. This potential walkout highlights the teams’ growing discontent with the UCI – specifically the expansion of the WorldTour calendar in future years – and the frustration of not having enough input in how they run their own businesses. The key contention pointed out in the August 10, 2016 AIGCP press release announcing the boycott is that the teams will themselves have to continue to shoulder the costs of participating in what is...