Protour: Tour de France out, Tour Down Under in

Bizarre. But true! The Tour de France (and the other grand tours of Italy and Spain, for that matter) has excused itself from the ProTour, and the Aussies are in instead. Of course it's meaningless outside of recognising the very real break in relations between the grand tour organizers and the UCI, but it's fun to play with the idea that the Tour Down Under has replaced the TdF... from CN: The first non-European ProTour event status has been awarded to the the Tour Down Under in Adelaide, Australia the UCI announced on Thursday. The South Australian race will kick off the 2008 ProTour calendar on January 22. With the exclusion of the Grand Tours from the ProTour calendar, the UCI will now focus more efforts globally, and the Australian race is the first beneficiary of the new direction for the series.