Geox and Cofidis fail to make the ProTeam cut
On Monday 22 November, the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) released the full list of the 18 teams being awarded a ProTeam licence for the 2011 season.
Earlier in November, the UCI had ranked the teams according to the race results of their top 15 riders over the last two years. All 18 teams awarded ProTeam licences for 2011 are from the top 20, with only Geox (17th) and
Cofidis (19th) missing out.
“We want to have the best riders in the best teams at the best races and that’s what this system will give us in time. Everybody wants to be ProTeam status, but we can only take so many,” said UCI president Pat McQuaid to
Cyclingnews.
“I saw where Geox were complaining bitterly and Cofidis was a little bit more pragmatic in their statements, but if it wasn’t them then it would be another two teams would be complaining.”
Geox team manager Mauro Gianetti has claimed that ethics should be more important in the UCI’s decision when they are considering who to award a license to.
Geox will be home to Denis Menchov and Carlos Sastre next season. Sastre has finished in the top-10 overall at 14 Grand Tours and he won the Tour de France in 2008. He is the only Tour winner to have never been implicated in a doping scandal since Miguel
Indurain, who won every year from 1991 to 1995.
“I think this decision is bad news for cycling,” said Gianetti.
“Carlos Sastre is the only Tour de France winner since 1996 not to be involved in a doping scandal and yet that’s been ignored, and the only thing that matter seems to be the points riders have scored in the last two years.”
Menchov finished on the podium in the 2010 Tour, behind Alberto Contador and Andy Schleck, and has finished in the top-five twice before. He won the Giro d’Italia in the 2009 and the Vuelta a Espana in both 2005 and 2007.
With Contador’s likely absence from the Tour next year, Menchov may become the sixth rider to win all three Grand Tours. He has also never been implicated in a doping scandal.
“The UCI isn’t coherent,” continued Gianetti. “Its decision gives the message that the important thing isn’t ethics, but points. That’s crazy. And they don’t seem worried about how those points are earned. They seem to accept points at any price.”
Eric Boyer of Cofidis suggested that the lack of a team leader is the reason why the other top-20 French team, AG2R, was awarded a ProTeam licence despite being lower on the list than Cofidis.
“The UCI told us that we didn’t have a leader and I’ve heard that message loud and clear,” said Boyer to
L’Équipe. “I hope that a rider from the 2011 roster will become the leader we are missing , but if at the end of next spring [if] we have the feeling that he’s not there, we’ll have to recruit one.”
Boyer had offered Thomas Voeckler a deal, which the French had nearly accepted. But Voeckler had a last-minute change of heart and decided to stay put at Europcar, the team he has ridden for his entire professional career.
Boyer has called upon the UCI to release the details of the ranking system so that he can begin drawing the team’s race program.
“The question is over their points and the other elements that come into account,” explained McQuaid.
“Cofidis is high in ethics, but there are finance, admin[istration], and the level of team overall. They’re all equally important, but obviously points are important because if you don’t have enough points, you don’t deserve to be in the top level.”
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