Happy New Year, or Bonne Année as they say at the UCI HQ in Aigle, Switzerland*. A new year has rung in but don’t worry if you missed the party last night although it’s safe to say a share of the peloton will have sunk some beers after the finish of races in Nanning, Utsunomiya and Bassano del Grappa yesterday.
Officially the 2025 professional road cycling season starts today. It’s anecdotal for the most part but there’s one big fix to be done.
That’s the UCI rule in question, as you can see the new season starts the day after the last World Tour race has happened. With the Tour of Guangxi finishing yesterday that makes today the start of the 2025 season.
It’s mainly a trivial admin issue but any points earned in races for the remainder of 2024 like the upcoming Tour du Faso, the Vuelta Ciclista a Ecuador and so on count to the 2025 score even if they happen in 2024.
But the one big issue where it counts, and the purpose of this blog post, is to point that if the UCI rules in black and white that the 2025 season starts today then the UCI and the pro teams really should get around to making pro contracts run across a similar period. For example 1 November-30 October rather than per calendar year.
Pro riders will still be salaried by their old team for the next two months. Ben O’Connor has has already attended a Greenedge team gathering and after a well-deserved rest he’ll be training hard again soon in anticipation of his first races with his new squad. Yet he’s still legally a Decathlon-Ag2r La Mondiale rider and going to be paid the French team until the end of December. Likewise for any other rider changing teams, they’re now all focussed on delivering with their new teams but contractually and in terms of wages they belong to the old squad.
This is often visible moment when riders gather for training camps. When Simon Yates goes to Calpe for the Visma-LAB camp this December he’ll be obliged to wear his Jayco kit and ride his Giant bike; ditto Lenny Martinez who has to don Groupama-FDJ kit and ride his Wilier around the Costa Blanca despite showing up for work chez Bahrain. It’s here that things get a little absurd, imagine another workplace where you’re expected to show up, but have to wear the clothing of your previous employer?
More importantly the bike matters as a rider needs to find their new position, get used to any changes in components and so on but officially they’re not supposed to use the new machine until January. You might remember Sergio Higuita being fired by EF because he was filmed riding his Bora Specialized before 1 January.
The bike example matters and the clothing is largely cosmetic but obviously visible so we see the absurdity. However surely the real oddity is riders are going to become de facto employees of their 2025 teams in the coming weeks, they’re taking part in the workplace of their new employer but still technically hired by another. It’d just make more sense to make them de jure employees too. Or without the Latin jargon if they’re working for their new team already it’d be sensible if they were legally employed by them too.
The fix to this is have contracts run from November to October, still 12 months. Easier said than done of course. Plenty of riders hold contracts today are valid until the 31 December in some future year and they’d be hard to amend. But the UCI and teams could agree to reform this so that future contracts have a 30 October expiry.
Remember the things like the minimum wage are part of the “Joint Agreements”, a set of terms and conditions agreed between the AIGCP group of teams and the CPA rider union, mediated by the UCI. Indeed it’s Article 6 that stipulates:
Art. 6 Contract shall be for a specified period ending on 31 December
This could be rewritten. Clearly the change couldn’t come by making anyone worse off, by saying to someone with a contract to December that they’ll have to forgo two months, it’d only be for new contracts.
Conclusion
It’s a small fix for pro cycling. It won’t increase TV revenues, make the Tour de France more thrilling nor safer… but it can help in smaller ways and above all it’s reasonably achievable. It’s not a new call either, this blog’s raised it before and others have too. With riders effectively swapping teams now it’s just obvious to align contracts too.
Lastly this blog doesn’t do cyclo-cross but that branch of the sport looks even odder when teams change kit, branding and sometimes name mid-season because contracts are also January-December. If this could be fixed first, perhaps road cycling could copy soon after? Either way, happy new year.
* the Google Streetview image is from the village of Bonne Année, “Happy New Year” in French. It’s the slopes of the climb to Torgon, used by the Tour de Romandie with recent winners like Primož Roglič and Demi Vollering. Follow the long straight road on the right and the white object in the woodland…. is UCI HQ.
À sensible argument !
Is it possible that the UCI doesn’t push for changes to the ‘contract year’ because it allows some freedom to one day add World Tour races somewhere in the southern hemisphere in November/December? If there’s someone willing to pay big bucks to host a mid-November race the UCI might find it hard to say no even if the teams and riders were against it. By having the year finish after the last event rather than the last day of October, the UCI keeps a revenue raising option open.
I don’t see any races on the horizon and besides the UCI does say the season itself has finished. Calendar reform is something on the table but it’s being viewed as something to arrange between January and October. I think it’s more just a legacy thing where it’s always been the calendar year so it stays that way, even if in recent years teams gather a lot before the year end and so they’ve got ahead of the calendar year format.
Maybe just maybe (no idea about the historical reality of this) the concept was avoiding riders being left with no contract during “vacations”, when the off season was more of an actual off season, at least as far as road teams were concerned (i.e. barring track or cx). A bit like unions trying to avoid that the year to year contracts related to education (including, say, cleaning up the buildings and so) don’t cover summer, as most employers, even public ones, constantly try to achieve (9 months contract to cover an ay).
In the case of cyclists, the teams might have been interested (in the past) to leave athletes at the end of October and have new hirings starting in February…
Surely they just need to allow the inclusion of some sort of basic clause allowing the contract to be closed at the end date, so in this years case yesterday, of the final UCI world tour race of the final year of the contract? Doesn’t sound very complicated to me and my completely layman’s understanding of contract law!
Two consecutive years where salaries are not a full year could be hard to swallow. Fair enough for riders to work a 10-month year, but follow this with a 14-month period and the contracts would get complicated. So too the team budgets and sponsor funding.
Can’t blame anyone for wanting to leave things as they are.
It’s no bad thing for riders to get a period to either be at home or working their way in to a team with no obligation to ride any of these new-fangled fly-away races?
Other rules I’d change would be around feed-zones, street furniture denotation methods, rider race day quotas…
I’d also like to see a carbon budget allocation imposed on each team ( and no I don’t mean about the carbon in bikes ).
Yes – it’s beyond silly that the UCI enforces rules to dictate when contracts begin and end for several reasons:
~ UCI’s sport has several logical contract end and beginning points, almost none of which are logically January 1-December 31
~ it is very easy to have several potential dating schemes per the UCI agreement, it could easily stipulate these options
~ it’s not relevant for the UCI to get too caught up on exact employment contract and other terms – for one, there are far too many tax/employment jurisdictions for the UCI to possibly be enforceable, knowledgeable or even practical under all. And for two, the UCI’s rules are really only sporting based, it needs to focus on this area
~ PLUS, if your employment contract did not comply with the UCI’s rules, but it was legally enforceable in the respective jurisdiction and the UCI “banned” the contract, the respective jurisdiction would still hold both employer/employee accountable. My point is, the UCI is far overreaching on their power here. If the UCI banned a rider’s contract because it didn’t comply with the UCI dating, let’s say the contract was November 1, 2024-October 31, 2025, and the contract was Canadian, if a rider showed up for a team event November 16, and had received 1 pay period already, 100% the employment contract is enforceable. There is NOTHING the UCI could do to “cancel” the contract. If the rider was banned from all races, but he/she made themselves available to race and trained accordingly, and showed up to races, etc. they would still be entitled to salary.
It’s not really a question of the UCI trying to supersede national employment law; the regulations refer (and defer) to local legislation in a number of places. Rather, the regulations require WorldTour teams to meet a number of minimum standards in order to be registered. These include requiring all of their rider contracts to include *at least* the terms set out in the model contract. Presumably a contract that doesn’t meet those standards wouldn’t be registered by the UCI and either the rider, the team or both might lose their registration as a result. The contract would still be valid as a matter of employment law, though.
The contracts can go beyond the minimum standards, but must include at least the terms set out, including a term ensuring that the contract lasts till the end of the calendar year. Presumably this benefits both the rider – by avoiding the unpaid holiday issue mentioned by Gabriele – but also the teams/competition, by requiring in-season transfers to be approved.
Perhaps a long transition period would be an option to go from one system to the other. There is some legacy of transferring a rider on a jan to Dec contract to November as they would be contracted to 2 teams at the same time.
New riders, riders out of contract or a mutual agreement between teams with the transferring rider (with the old contract paid out in full) could see most new contracts starting in November. Over time they would dominate and eventually replace the old contracts entirely.
The other way to do it could be to declare a year in the future where the contract year will be only 10 months long but will still count as a full year for certain purposes (e.g. neo pro deals being 2 years long).
Perhaps 2029, so that no existing deals will be affected.
Better make that 2031 now.
Even if contracts were to remain January to December, surely it would be a simple fix to insert a clause considering the time period from the rider’s last race of the season until the beginning of their contract with their new team “paid vacation” during which contractual obligations to wear team kit and ride the team sponsor’s bike are null and void. This would solve the problem of a rider being forced to go to a training camp wearing their former team’s kit (which can’t make their new team’s sponsor happy). I am not a lawyer, and perhaps there are sound legal reasons this couldn’t be done, but from a layman’s perspective it looks like the best solution.
I get what you’re saying, but in both appearance and reality you’d have a situation where someone was paid by one team while working for another team. In effect the current situation is exactly that – the exiting rider is being paid to go on vacation, not race, AND not represent a competitor. What’s interesting about cycling is that in the current situation, when a rider shows up at his future employer’s training camp in December, his or her current employer is tolerant of their employee working for a direct competitor, as long as the sponsor’s who are actually paying the salary aren’t shortchanged and disrespected. I find that pretty amazing.
Given that the main thing team sponsors are getting for their money is publicity, and most of that publicity is certain riders being seen wearing specific kit and riding specific equipment, I can’t see many sponsors being happy with the “oh-it’s-just-vacation” solution.
I do agree it’s a wacky system, but a lot of the “simple solutions” I’m reading in these comments appear rather
I’m sure in European football, most contracts end on 30th June, and obviously start 1st July. Then they have two transfer windows, including a mid season window in Jan.
Something similar could happen in pro cycling; make 31st October the end date, and 1st November starts the year. Currently, as mentioned, a rider joining their new team in the old kit, and often on the old bike looks utterly ridiculous. And if you wanted to instigate a mid season transfer window, you could have the last 2 weeks of June – in time for the Tour.
The CX season needs to be different, as currently it’s a bit silly. Make it 1st March – 28/29th February
I’ll tell you more: Torgon is where the UCI employees do their quick lunch rides when they want to climb a little. Very convenient from the office.
Also a useful climb for the World Cycing Centre riders in Aigle too. A lot of good roads close, some great ones within riding distance too.
Do you know what happens if a rider is severely injured during a training camp with a new team while still under contract with his/her old team?
Coverage of healthcare cost would vary depending on the riders nationality, but could there be a situation where the old and new team both try to get out of any responsibility?
Exactly, and if there’s emergency healthcare coverage, there’s likely to be disputes over rehab costs etc. And an accident could happen just be training at home as well where a rider is following a plan set by their future team but still legally part of the old one etc.
Surely no pro would wait until 1 Jan to mount her/his new steed. Esp. if headed down under to race that month.
IIRC the Higuita case was during a sanctioned and public Fondo, at which he was most likely to be, and was in fact, filmed.
So what secret locale do pros go to the last 10 weeks of the year, in order to ride their new team bikes unnoticed? Is there a fav skunkworks area? The rule may have it purposes for sponsors, but must have the effect of driving them to a training “underground.”
Indoors… riding the bike out of sight.
Article 7 of the model rider contract allows them to use the new kit and equipment “provided that such equipment is white-labelled”.
Does the sign to mark exiting the village have a red line through it?
No! Sign looks reversible, same on each side etc
Ben O’Connor is down to ride the Saitama Criterium, so one more day in the current kit to go…