Restraint of trade? UCI blocks pro cycling teams from minor races

Well this is interesting. Back in "my" day (being old and all) it was amateurs vs professionals and the restraint of trade was simple. If you earned money from cycling you got barred from the Olympics; and if you joined the local cycling club and it happened to be a pro club you may as well have joined a different universe. But that's all gone now and "amateurs" don't really exist, instead elite athletes are professionals whether they like it or not, and it's "all in". Unless you run a significant yet smaller road race or tour, in which case the cycling world's governing body, the UCI, can impose its will and stop top-level teams from competing. I guess there's good and bad in that rule, but I do like Chris Horner's comment:

On Monday, Horner said the enforcement of the UCI rule was "wrong." "It’s a pro race, you should be allowed to race your bike. If we are skipping ProTour races to do a non-ProTour event, then it makes sense. But you should never, never, never just not allow a rider to race his bike. ... every man should be afforded the right to work."

The opposing view may be that a ProTour team will simply scoop up all the winnings, leaving the other guys (also just trying to do their job) picking up the leftovers.

ProTour winner Evans on his season

Cadel Evans seems the least-rated contender no matter where or when he is racing. He's generally acknowledged as one of several contenders but always with a qualification of some sort. Either someone else is stronger or has won more recently, or Evans is tired, or perhaps injured. It never seems as though the guy is really likely to win, like Armstrong, Ullrich or Basso were and Bettini, Contador and Di Luca are now. Yet he's so consistent, when he gets the chance. Perhaps it's his quiet demeanor. After such a great 2007 maybe 2008 will be different for Cadel.

Interesting overview of his season, here at Cyclingnews.com.: Cadel Evans won the ProTour classification on Saturday after a consistent stream of steady results over the past four months. Before the Giro di Lombardia, he talked about his performances in the Vuelta a España and world road race championships, the Tour Down Under's graduation to the ProTour calendar, his plans for the months ahead and his Olympic aspirations.

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.

O'Grady now leads the ProTour!

From TuttobiciWeb comes the news... O'Grady has stepped up a gear to lead Freire overall!


"15/04/2007 Stuart O'GRady è leader del Pro Tour
Grazie all'odierna vittoria nella Parigi-Roubaix l'australiano Stuart O'Grady passa al comando della classifica del Pro Tour. Il portacolori della Csc ha 79 punti contro i 77 dello spagnolo Oscar Freire e i 62 di Davide Rebellin. Ottavo con 50 punti Alessandro Ballan, vincitore domenica scorsa del Giro delle Fiandre. Prossima gara del Pro Tour l'Amstel Gold Race, in programma domenica prossima.

CLASSIFICA DI PRO TOUR

1 Stuart O'Grady (Aus) Team CSC 79 pts
2 Oscar Freire Gomez (Spa) Rabobank 77
3 Davide Rebellin (Ita) Gerolsteiner 62
4 Alberto Contador Velasco (Spa) Discovery Channel Pro Cycling Team 58
5 Juan Jose Cobo Acebo (Spa) Saunier Duval-Prodir 57
6 Tom Boonen (Bel) Quickstep-Innergetic 57
7 Andreas Klöden (Ger) Astana 53
8 Alessandro Ballan (Ita) Lampre-Fondital 50
9 Roger Hammond (GBr) T-Mobile Team 45
10 Samuel Sanchez Gonzalez (Spa) Euskaltel-Euskadi 45
11 Tadej Valjavec (Slo) Lampre-Fondital 45
12 Robbie McEwen (Aus) Predictor-Lotto 44
13 Kim Kirchen (Lux) T-Mobile Team 41
14 Marcus Burghardt (Ger) T-Mobile Team 40
15 Juan Antonio Flecha Giannoni (Spa) Rabobank 40
16 Leif Hoste (Bel) Predictor-Lotto 40
17 Allan Davis (Aus) Discovery Channel Pro Cycling Team 40
18 Alexandre Vinokourov (Kaz) Astana 38
19 Luis Leon Sanchez Gil (Spa) Caisse d'Epargne 38
20 Luca Paolini (Ita) Liquigas 36"

Catchup on some news

Where do I start? CN has reported that Tyler Hamilton has signed (maybe at Tinkoff?) and expects to race in 2007. CN also reports that Riis has laid down the law on doing at CSC. And it's been widely reported that Aussie rider and stair-climber Paul Crake has broken some vertebrae in NZ. And the FRF boys are racing in Hainan with Josh Marden taking a stage. Did I mention Basso went to Discovery?