Where’s Francesca Rossi?

Francesca Rossi

The other day cyclingnews.com carried an interview with Anne Gripper, the former Head of Anti Doping Services at the UCI. The interview is worth reading in its own right but one thing stood for me, the fact that Anne Gripper has left the UCI but she is still a proud voice when it comes to the UCI’s bio passport scheme, the anti-doping system being pioneered by cycling’s governing body. Rightly so since she helped launch it.

Missing?
But Anne Gripper left the UCI and was replaced by an Italian, Francesca Rossi in early 2010. Only have you heard of her?

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Rider recruitment and nationality

Cadel Evans Aussie
This guy could be from Australia

One rider agent has denounced the “dictature of UCI points” when it comes to teams hiring riders. I’ve long suggested these ranking points are important, to the point of twisting incentives within the sport. But teams will recruit for other factors too. Obviously they want to hire riders capable of winning, or if not then good helpers. There are several other factors at play here. But one is nationality. Let’s take a look.

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Who’s going to the Worlds?

Denmark World Champs

Each year the qualification criteria for riding the World Championships varies but the idea is that countries with a higher ranking have the right to send larger teams to the race. For example Spain tops the UCI’s World Tour ranking and it can start nine riders to the men’s elite road race. This is true for all of the top-10 ranked countries, so long as each country has nine riders with World Tour ranking points. The top-10 are picked at the end of the week but today they stand as Spain, Italy, Australia, Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, Britain, Netherlands, USA and France.

But another clause says that teams have to have nine riders with ranking points and both Britain and Luxembourg fall foul here. Britain has eight riders with World Tour points, meaning it can have eight riders in Denmark; Luxembourg has only two with the Schleck brothers but another sub-clause says Luxembourg must start six riders.

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Marcel Kittel, a sprinter?

Marcel Kittel

Mark Cavendish seems so good you almost wonder what is wrong with the other sprinters. Look around and here’s ageing Alessandro Petacchi, André Greipel is strong but not prolific and Tyler Farrar is fast but usually not fast enough. But there’s a new generation coming, with several Italian riders lead by Andrea Guardini and a crop of Australians, Michael Matthews for example. But right now the Germans seem to have the edge, with neo-pro John Degenkolb already winning at the top level and above all Marcel Kittel. The Skil-Shimano rider took four stages in the Four Days of Dunkirk and last week took another four stages in the Tour de Pologne. But is he a sprinter?

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Peter Sagan’s come a long way

Winning the Tour of Poland today marks Peter Sagan’s first stage race win at “World Tour” level. It wasn’t long ago when he was riding around town on his mountain bike.

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Did Highroad ever have a sponsor?

There’s an air of the obituary across newspapers, cycling news websites and fellow blogs. Everyone’s lamenting the announcement that the Highroad team could not find a replacement sponsor for HTC to keep the team going into 2012 and beyond. And many are asking aloud why such a good team could not find a replacement sponsor.

But one answer is that they never had sponsorship in place since the day the team started.

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The Highroad that comes to an end

“After an exhaustive search to secure long term sponsorship we have concluded that it’s time to release our team members to pursue other options” That’s HTC-Highroad’s team boss Bob Stapleton. I’m travelling right now with a shaky internet connection so can’t cover the topic in detail but the team will fold at the end of … Read more

Red faces for Green Edge?

The Australian headline

“Stuey has wanted to be a part of this project since we first went public with wanting to put a team at the Tour de France, back in Adelaide last January… …We’ll be rolling out more big-name signings in the days and weeks ahead.“

That’s the headline screengrab plus a quote from an article in The Australian, the biggest selling-newspaper Down Under. Only it seems to be premature at best.

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Merger mania

Merger / takeover

Companies usually merge to strengthen their position with the idea that 1+1 = something greater than two, perhaps because they can assume a dominant position in their market. Think of Exxon and Mobil joining to make the biggest oil company in the world or Air France and KLM joining forces to match European rivals like Lufthansa.

Now in cycling we are seeing mergers between teams only this time it’s for quite different reasons. Rather than growth or dominance, this looks more like a story of survival. More like half a team plus a few more riders hopefully makes up a whole team.

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The transfer season is open

Deal time

2.15.120 A transfer period extends from 1 August to 20 October. A UCI ProTeam or licence applicant may only recruit riders during the transfer period… …For the purposes of this article “recruit” shall be deemed to mean concluding a contract with a rider to ride for the UCI ProTeam or licence applicant’s team, including situations where the rider in question is already under contract to the same UCI ProTeam or licence applicant at the moment of that recruitment, e.g. in the case of the renewal of an existing contract.

Today is the start of the transfer season and the paragraph above is the relevant UCI rule. Read the first line and you’d think things can only happen from today onwards but look twice and you’ll soon notice the wording that says “‘recruit’ shall be deemed to mean concluding a contract” and that the obvious conclusion to a contract is signing it. In other words a rider and a team can talk any time they like, they can discuss pay, the recruitment of other riders and more. All so long as they don’t “conclude” the contract, in other words they can settle all the terms of the deal and wait for 1 August to ink it.

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