Managers troubled by UCI team rankings
Jonathan Vaughters, manager of team Garmin and president of the Association International des Groupes Cyclistes Professionels (AIGCP), has spoken for many in his concern regarding the new system of sporting criteria used by the Union
Cycliste Internationale (UCI) in their team ranking. The list was released last week with the UCI’s announcement that only the top-20 teams would be in the running for the 18 ProTeam licenses.
The biggest surprise was the top team on the list, the Luxembourg Pro Cycling Project, which has never participated in a competition, while a number of current and long-standing ProTour teams did not make it into the top-20. The biggest
problem for Vaughters and AIGCP, however, is how secretive the UCI was of the criteria before the release of the list.
"I think that not lending visibility to this is extremely destructive to sponsorship searches," said Vaughters to
Cyclingnews while in New York searching for sponsors for the Slipstream U23 team. "Sponsors want to know if the team will be in the top events. To keep something semi-secret means you cannot give an official explanation to a sponsor."
Bob Stapleton, owner of American team HTC-Columbia, the biggest-winning Pro team of the last two years, pointed out that the UCI wanted the rankings to be a surprise. The secretive nature of the ranking criteria prevented teams from properly assessing where
they would stand in 2011 and from properly negotiating with current and future team sponsors.
"The UCI had the intention of making it unpredictable – it was a stated goal," said Stapleton. "That is not an attractive proposition for sponsors. They want to know that their franchise would have certain rights – you have to earn
those rights for sure – but this kind of mystery contest that isn't announced until October? That's not right."
The UCI has said that the top-15 teams will automatically be awarded top-level licenses so long as they fulfill the minimum ethical, financial and administrative requirements and that the remaining three will be awarded within the
top-20. ProTour license holders AG2R, Francaise des Jeux (FDJ) and Quick Step finished outside of the top-15 and it remains a mystery what rights they will have to the sport’s top competitions next season. The teams were shocked by their low rankings on the
list which bore little resemblance to the 2010 overall team classification list.
"I can’t comment on the chances of AG2R and Quickstep versus those of new candidates standing higher in the sporting hierarchy," said UCI spokesman Enrico Carpani. "The license commission now has to consider the overall UCI evaluations based on all four
criteria, though granted, the sporting criterion outranks the rest."
While AG2R and Quick Step are within the top-20, FDJ manager Marc Madiot is surprised to find his team in 21st and has demanded the classification details which the UCI has so far purposely withheld. The UCI has explained that the rankings are
based on the 2009 and 2010 results of the team’s top 15 riders for the 2011 season, but that is just about the extent of the details released.
"It is with surprise and incomprehension that we have learned the UCI's decision not to grant a ProTour license to the FDJ cycling team," said Madiot. "We are now trying to understand our classification that is based exclusively on the sporting criterion.
Our 2009 results left us in 16th position and after a mixed 2010 season, our 2011 recruits made us confident as to the attribution of the license. During the next few days, we expect some clarifications from the UCI as regards the calculation method of the
classification."
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