UCI Licensing Commission to rule on whether Saxo Bank should lose WorldTour team status

QUOTE:

The UCI Licensing Commission has today been asked to rule on whether
the Saxo Bank can continue to be a part of the WorldTour following the
Court for Arbitration in Sport's decision earlier this week to impose
a two year doping ban on Alberto Contador and to strip him of all his
results and ranking points earned since the start of last year.

The UCI statment announcing the referall makes the point that
according to a strict interpretation of WorldTour rules Saxo Bank
without Contador's points Saxo Bank are well short of the required
number of points to meet the qualifying sporting criteria for
WorldTour status. Under current UCI rules points follow riders and
according to the UCI Contador, whose points are now null and void,
accounted for 68 per cent of the Saxo Bank total for last year.

The UCI statement announcing the referral did not give a timetable for
when a decision would be made, but we can expect that a decision will
be made before the European classics season starts in a few weeks
time. In any event the simple fact of a referral can only have a
destabilising effect on the Saxo Bank riders and management, with
there being a real likelihood that should its WorldTour licence be
revoked that the team will collapse. With the benefit of hindsight the
decision by Bjarne Riis to stick with Contador despite the potential
ban hanging over him looks like a colossal error of judgement.

The decision to refer was made at a meeting of the UCI's Professional
Cycling Council made up of representatives of teams, riders, and race
organisers. The PCC also approved another change to the rules
regarding Proteam registration under which any team failing to supply
the relevant paperwork by October 20, the date of the sporting
evaluation, would be excluded from the registration process.

PCC delegates were also treated to a speech by UCI president Pat
McQuaid in which he praised the PCC for "contributing to protect core
values of the cycling community", the PCC also approved in principle a
new addition to the WorldTour calandar in the shape of the Tour of
Hangzhou a five day stage race in China to follow on from the Tour of
Beijing in October this year. More on that in a separate story.

http://road.cc/content/news/52441-uci-licensing-commission-rule-whether-saxo-bank-should-lose-worldtour-team-status

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Simon Mason
.